The Sword of God

Chapter 23

Milton sped through the trailer park and out onto West McMillan Avenue. He swung the wheel and hauled the RV around to the right, passing the junctions with East Court and West Court Streets before reaching the crossroads that bisected Falls Road. He ignored the stop sign, skidding around in a wide loop and bouncing off the row of parked cars outside the offices of North Coast Realty. Metal crunched loudly and alarms sounded, a pedestrian shrieking abuse at him, as he stamped on the gas again and changed up to third.

Behind him, he heard the sound of a police siren.

He looked down at the speedometer. He was doing fifty, and the engine was already protesting. He might be able to squeeze sixty out of it, if he was lucky, but no more. The RV wasn’t built for speed, and what was more, this one had been idle for a long time. It had been a small miracle that it had started at all, and he didn’t want to push his luck.

Wind was lashing his face and stinging his eyes. He swerved around two cars waiting for a red light, slaloming between oncoming traffic from the left and the right, a cacophony of angry horns sounding in his wake. He pulled out to overtake a logging truck, trunks lashed down to its bed, and swung in ahead of it just in time to avoid another truck coming in the opposite direction. Two more angry horns sounded as he pulled away.

The northern outskirts of town were marked by the railroad, a single track that led to Marquette to the east and Duluth in the west. The railroad signal ahead was flashing red, and the bells were clanging, and with no other cards to play, Milton counterclockwised the wheel hard and screeched around to the left, teetering on two wheels briefly until the RV straightened out and all four wheels touched down again. Railroad Street ran alongside the tracks for a mile, and Milton followed it, the road dipping down and then climbing again, racing by the cheap prefabricated housing that abutted the line. The siren grew louder and, as he looked back in the mirror, he saw the blue and red lights of a cruiser as it turned off the main road and sped along in pursuit. It was directly behind him. It was coming fast. He would never be able to outrun it and, if he stopped, they would shoot him. He had to go someplace they couldn’t follow.

The engine began to splutter. Milton looked down at the dash again and saw that the fuel gauge was showing empty.

Come on.

The asphalt ran out, and the road continued as a bare, unadopted track littered with fist-sized rocks and pocked with cavities that crushed the RV’s ancient suspension as it bounced over and through them. He lost speed, but the cruiser did not.

It drew nearer and nearer.

He heard the big train before he saw it, a low, throaty rumble that grew louder until he saw the orange locomotive heading right at him. A triangle of headlamps glowed brightly down the tracks, and clouds of black fumes spewed out into the night. The diesel’s horn shrieked as the driver saw the RV barrelling towards him.

Milton gripped the wheel tight and kept his foot down hard, pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

The cruiser was close, twenty feet behind and narrowing the gap, but Milton didn’t mind that now. He wanted it to be close. It suited what he had in mind.

He swung across to the right of the road, leaving enough space for the car to accelerate on his left. He turned and looked and saw Lundquist at the wheel, the flashing lights pouring into the cab. Michael Callow was in the passenger seat, the window open, a shotgun pointed right at him.

Too close to miss.

Milton waited until the last possible second, so near to the massive diesel that he could see its registration stencilled across its flank and then the angry face of the driver in the lit cab. He heaved the wheel to the right, the RV bouncing up the small embankment until it reached the track, the front wheels buckling as they crashed over the leading rail and skimmed across the second. Its forward momentum, although rapidly retarded, was still more than enough to send it down the embankment, steeper on this side, and the front of the RV buried itself into the ditch that separated the railroad from the field beyond. The sudden impact propelled Milton from the seat, bouncing him off the wheel. His head crashed against the dashboard and his vision dimmed. His ears filled with the indignant roar of the train’s horn.

Milton’s head swam and, as he opened his eyes, he saw two of everything. He wanted to rest, to let the screeching noise in his head subside, to assess the bellow of pain from his left arm. His hearing corrected itself, and the screeching became deeper, an angry ululation as the train thundered by.

The train… the train…

He came around.

He had only bought himself a little time. The cruiser would be on the other side of the train, Callow with his shotgun, and now Milton had no transport to use to get away from them. He had to get clear and spend the advantage he had won to put some distance between them.

He reached his left hand for the handle next to the door and started to pull himself out of the seat. The pain in his arm intensified. He let go and probed with his right hand. His arm was tender and sore, and the harder he pressed, the worse the pain became.

But there was no time to worry about that.

The Winnebago was tilted forwards at fifty or sixty degrees. The angle pressed his chest against the wheel. Milton turned so he could reach his right hand over the back of the seat and pulled himself back into the salon, grabbing the back of a chair, an open cupboard door, the table’s single leg, anything within reach. He didn’t have the time to make a proper search, but he knew he couldn’t just run. He had already decided that he was going to hide in the woods until he had the chance to assess the situation, but his bag, his rifle and all his gear were still back in the Sheriff’s Office in Truth.

He had to find the essentials.

He looked for Mallory’s pack, but she must have left it in the Pontiac. No way to get that now. He would have to improvise.

He found a bag in the cupboard. There was a first-aid kit above his head, and he yanked it off the wall and stuffed it into the bag. He grabbed a saucepan from where it had fallen to the floor and shoved that in, too. He found a flashlight in a cupboard beneath the sink, a nylon line that was used to dry clothes, another kitchen knife with a serrated edge, cable ties, a roll of dental floss from the bathroom and a small bottle of alcohol-based sanitising gel.

He yanked the drawstring tight, tossed the bag to the front of the RV, and scrambled after it, pulling himself through the empty window of the driver’s side door and dropping out into long grass between the trunks of the trees. He reached in and hauled the bag out after him.

The train was still coming: freight cars loaded with logs and then a line of black tankers, warning notices proclaiming that they were filled with ethanol. The noise was immense, a deafening clatter as the brakes slowly brought the mile-long convoy to rest. That was fortunate. The railroad would have been clear much more quickly if the train had just continued onwards.

Lundquist, Callow, and the others had two choices. If they wanted to keep their vehicles, they would have to drive to either end of the train and cross the track there. Or they could wait for it to come to a complete stop before climbing through the boxcars and coming after him on foot. Either way, it had probably bought him an extra five minutes.

Milton slung the bag over his right shoulder and then forced himself between the small trees and bushes, struggling through the vegetation until coming out the other side. He recognised the wide field of corn although he was a long way from where they had entered when they had started their trek the day before yesterday.

Milton ran into the field, each stride sending a flash of pain up from his arm. He stumbled on a deep rut, righted himself, and kept going. Lightning flashed overhead, and he could briefly make out the line of trees, underbrush, rocks, and, beyond that, the darkest of the deep forest and the slow climb up the flanks of the mountains. The lightning flickered away, and darkness fell once more.

He had to keep going.

The train’s diesel engine, half a mile farther down the tracks now, finally wheezed out long and hard as it drew to a stop. The freight cars jangled and rattled as they pressed up against each other.

Milton heard the shouts and exclamations. Lundquist, Callow, Chandler, the cop, and whoever else they had drawn into their conspiracy were out of their vehicles and after him. He concentrated on his footing, his eyes scanning the ground ahead of him, occasionally looking up to measure his progress to the trees. There came the report of a long gun, the whistle of a bullet and the wet thud as it scored a trench in the mud to his left. Another gunshot and another splash of mud, this time to his right, and Milton knew that he wasn’t going to make it.

He jagged sharply to the right, ploughing into the corn. The crop was tall and healthy, the stalks reaching up to well above his head. The stems looked like bamboo cane, each bearing the same distinctive, large green leaf. Milton raised his forearms before his face and ploughed ahead. There was another crack from a rifle, but the shooter was aiming blind and hoping for a miracle, and the shot went nowhere near him.

The stalks slammed into his body, lashing against his head and face. The pain in his left arm was worsening with every stride. His foot caught against a rock and he tumbled over, scraping his hands and knees as he hit the ground. He paused, gathering his breath, wiping the sweat from his face. He raised himself to his haunches, staying low, and strained his ears for the sound of pursuit.

He heard the sound of running footsteps, then heavy breathing.

“He’s in the corn!” a voice bellowed out.

“We’ll never see him.”

“Look harder. He’s hurt.”

“Get to the other end. Move. If he comes out, shoot him.”

Another huge fork of lightning split across the sky. Milton took advantage of the brief flash, moving silently towards the track. He looked out for a second, no longer than that, and worked out his position and the route he would need to take to reach deeper cover in the forest. He was three quarters of the way along the track, a hundred yards from the end of the field. He could see the figure of a man as he jogged to the trees. He turned quickly and looked behind him. Two other men were at the far end of the field, near to the crashed RV.

They were penning him inside the corn.

The flash of light died.

Thunder boomed.

One of the two men by the RV called out. “Milton!” It was Lundquist. “This is stupid. I know you’re hurt.”

Milton crept back into the corn, leaving six feet between himself and the edge of the tractor’s tracks.

“We can wait here all night if we have to.”

He started towards the trees, moving quietly.

“You might as well come out.”

He stayed low, parting the crop as delicately as he could, the bag bumping against his back as he moved.

“You’re making things worse for that girl. You come out now, maybe we go easy on her. But if you put me in a sour mood, I promise you, with God as my witness, I’m going to take it out on her.”

He reached the edge of the crop, leaving six or seven rows between himself and the clear space beyond. Lightning branched overhead once again, and he could see the man who was guarding this end of the field. He was average height and build, dressed in a police uniform, with a pistol in his right hand. It wasn’t the cop from whom he had taken the gun. This one must have been summoned during the pursuit.

Milton stayed low, each footstep placed carefully as he narrowed the distance between himself and the man.

The light faded as the thunder roared.

Milton was close enough to reach out and touch the man’s leg.

He turned back towards Lundquist.

“I don’t see nothing!” he yelled out, the noise loud and sudden. “I’m coming back.”

Milton held his breath.

“Stay the fuck down there, George!”

The man started to retort, caught his tongue, and turned to face the trees. He cursed under his breath, barely audible, as he presented his back to Milton.

Lightning flashed. The stalks parted around him as he stood and took a pace forwards, reaching out to grab the man with his right arm around his chest and his left, weakly, around his neck. He heaved backwards, hard enough to send another burst of pain up from his wounded arm, and dragged the man backwards into the crop. The man, George, was startled and he struggled impotently as Milton held him. A deafening thunderclap unrolled overhead as he wrapped his right arm around the man’s head, and reaching his right hand all the way around to grasp the back of his cranium, he twisted in a hard, crisp movement. The cop’s neck snapped with a loud crack, and his body fell limp.

Milton dropped him to the ground, took his Beretta and frisked him. He found a pair of handcuffs, a handkerchief, and a smattering of change. He pocketed them all, then ejected the magazine from the pistol and checked the load.

Two rounds left.

Unfortunate.

He patted him down for a spare magazine, but he couldn’t find one.

Two shots and at least four men still left out there. Milton didn’t like those odds at all. It had evened out a little, but he was wounded and he didn’t have enough ammunition.

He was still going to have to run.

“George!” Lundquist shouted.

Milton crept to the north end of the field where the crop ended. He parted the stalks and glanced both ways. He saw the rocky fringe, then a hedge line, and, beyond that, the start of the trees.

He paused, waiting for the lightning.

It came, a blinding flash, and then it faded.

He stepped out.

“Stop!”

There came a loud, concussive report as a rifle was fired in his direction. The shooter’s aim was bad, or perhaps he was frightened or jittery with adrenaline, but the shot landed short, throwing a shower of scree against Milton’s legs. He swivelled around and raised the gun. Two men, a hundred feet away, at the eastern corner of the field. How had he missed them? He fired, too far away to hope for a hit, but enough to scatter the two men, both of them throwing themselves into the corn.

One round left.

He scrambled up the shallow incline, dislodging small rocks and a cascade of stones, threw himself through a narrow break in the hedge, and then sprinted for the trees.

He heard shouts from behind him, but he knew he would be able to get away from them now. They were scattered, and now they knew that he had a weapon. They didn’t know that he was almost dry. Then they would find the man that he had killed, and that would give them pause once more.

The low scrub scratched and clawed at his legs as he burst through it and started to climb the shallow slope that led into the forest and the hills beyond it. He needed time to collect himself. His arm was still leaking, and he knew that he would need to fix it soon. He needed to think about his next move, too.

Ellie, Mallory, and Arty were in trouble.

Lester Grogan? He was willing to bet that the sheriff was dead.

Milton had tried to persuade himself that he was done with Death.

But Death, it seemed, was not done with him.

It had a habit of finding him, even when he cast himself so far out into the wilderness that he might as well have been in another world. He had been able to bury his old urges and instincts, bury them so deep that he had almost been able to forget them, but Morten Lundquist had roused them.

He would have to account for that.

There would be a price to pay.

The scream in his head was baying for their blood.

And Milton wouldn’t be able to rest until he had drowned himself in it.

He knew that Lundquist and the others would keep coming for him. They already outnumbered him. Maybe there would be others, too. He had no weapon, save a kitchen knife and a pistol with one shot in the chamber. He was badly wounded.

But if Lundquist did persevere, if he came after him, he would give him a demonstration that would make him wish he had never been born.

Chapter 24

Morten Lundquist stood over the body of George Pelham and shone his flashlight down into his face. His eyes were still open, unblinking into the bright light, but his head had fallen at a loose, odd angle that told Lundquist all he needed to know. George had been the son of George Senior and Patricia, good friends of Lundquist and his wife, who had lived in Truth for years. George Junior, who was barely more than a boy, had been involved in the militia for little more than a month. They had needed a little more manpower to help keep the FBI distracted and off the scent of Michael and the others. He had been glad to join. He was a pious man, like his parents.

Another martyr for the Sword of God.

“What do you want us to do with him?” Leland Mulligan asked, pointing down at the dead man.

“Nothing.”

“We can’t…”

“We need to call it in.”

“And what do we say?”

Lundquist paused as he considered that. Whoever this Milton was, he was either the luckiest man alive, or he knew what he was doing. He had evaded their ambush at the RV and then he had hidden in the corn and picked off the one weak link in the cordon of men who had penned him in. Most people would have run for the forest, and most people would have been shot.

He had heard plenty about the SAS.

Seemed that they were as good as advertised.

He shoved his pistol back into his holster. He had been a policeman for years, ever since he left the army, and he’d never seen anything quite like this. The last man to have been murdered in Truth had been Stephen O’Reilly, ten years back, and he had been stabbed by his wife for messing around with Bill Pascoe’s daughter. This, though?

This was something else.

And more importantly, all this havoc was putting their fulfilment of God's word at risk.

The vice president was due in Minneapolis in four days. They couldn’t let this drag out, start to affect timings, start to affect what God had told him to do.

Lundquist couldn’t tolerate that.

He turned to the men. “Listen up. I’m going to go back to town, and I’m going to raise the militia.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone. But you need to stay here. My best guess, Milton has gone straight into the woods, and he’s going to keep going. He’ll expect us to come on after him. I want you to form a cordon, five hundred yards between you. You can cover a mile.”

“And if he comes out?” Leland asked.

“We shoot him,” Michael said.

Leland looked apprehensive.

Lundquist snapped, “He’s not going to come out, Private. He’s injured. He’s going to go deeper inside, and then he’s going to hide. But we can’t take any chances. That’s why you’re going to wait out here for me to get back with the others.”

“Don’t worry,” his son said. “We’ve got this.”

Lundquist looked at him and laid on the scepticism. “Really, Private? You think so?”

His doubt stung the boy, he knew that. But Michael needed to be kept sharp. He needed to know that Lundquist had been disappointed by what he had allowed to happen up at the lake, and then at the Winnebago, and that he was going to have to earn his father’s trust again.

“If he comes out, I guarantee you, sir, he is dead.”

“See that he is.”

Lundquist saluted. The men returned the gesture.

Michael grinned. Lundquist could see that the boy was excited. That was fair enough, in the circumstances. Hell, Lundquist felt the buzz of adrenaline himself. Leading out a posse of men to track down a fugitive? That kind of thing didn’t happen any more.

Lundquist hurried back through the field of corn, passed the wrecked Winnebago, clambered up the embankment, crossed the railroad, and then slid down the other side. He ran to the cruiser, got inside, started the engine, and then set off down the road. He took the radio off the hook and pressed it to his ear.

“State police,” he said into the receiver. “State police, this is Truth. Truth to State police, come in, please.”

“State police to Truth. Is that you, Morten?”

“Nancy?”

“That’s right. What’s gotten into you?”

He fed her the story he had prepared: they had a man on the run who had killed three police officers, including the sheriff. He told her that the man had been pursued into the woods north of the Presque Isle River. He explained that he was armed and extremely dangerous.

“Jesus H Christ, Morten. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, unable to hide his impatience. He needed to be on the move.

“What do you need?”

“Every available man up here as soon as possible. He’s in the woods. We need to set up a cordon to keep him there. We need to set up a box: men on the railroad to the south, the river to the north, and ten miles either side.”

“And then what?”

“I’m leading a posse to get him.”

Nancy said she would sound the alert, told him to stay safe, and ended the call.

He swung the car onto the road into town. He reached down and changed frequencies.

“This is Lundquist. Repeat, this is Lundquist. Come in.”

Seth Olsen answered. “Morten. What in God’s name is going on tonight?”

“Has Morris arrived?”

“Not yet.”

“All right. Listen up. He’s bringing the Stanton kids and the girl from the FBI.”

“Want to tell me what for?”

Lundquist ran through what had happened.

“Okay,” Seth said when he was done. “I’ll put them in the barn.”

“You keep them there. You got two dead bodies coming, too. Sellar and Sturgess. You need to get rid of them.”

Seth clucked his tongue. “I guess the pigs haven’t been fed today.”

“Do whatever you need to do. We can’t have any trace of them left. As far as everyone else is concerned, they never came out of the woods. The FBI is going to be back up here again and, if they find out they were around, they’re going to start to doubt my story.”

“Relax. There won’t be a scrap. You know what the pigs are like. Those big old gals, they’ll eat them from the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes.”

Lundquist relaxed a little. Seth was his brigade captain. He had years in the army, too. If he said he was going to do something, he did it, and it stayed done. He was married to Magrethe, another solid recruit to the cause, another person upon whom he knew that he could rely. Lars Olsen was their son. Lundquist knew he should tell Seth that their boy was dead, killed by Milton, but he didn’t want to distract him from the tasks that he needed him to do now. It would keep. Better to do it face to face.

“Did you call the men?”

“As many as we could. The phones are down again, cell towers and landlines this time. We must’ve gotten around half of them before it happened. I’m about to go and get the rest. They’ve started to arrive. We’re putting them in the other barn. Where are you?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Out.”

Chapter 25

Mallory Stanton was in the back of a van. It was only medium sized and it was cramped, barely enough space for her, Arty, and Ellie Flowers, plus the two bodies that they had loaded inside. Ellie was next to Mallory, her head resting on her right shoulder. She could feel the woman’s breath warm against her throat. Arty was opposite her, slumped across the floor of the van. She could hear the rattle of his breathing. Both of them were unconscious.

Mallory didn’t want to look to her left. One of the dead bodies was pressed up against her. She didn’t know whether it was Sturgess or Sellar, but, whoever it was, his body was close enough that it slumped closer to her whenever they took a corner. The storm was raging outside and the lightning, when it came, blasted a moment of silver light between the cracks in the rear doors. Mallory had looked, once, and had seen the shape of the bodies, one piled atop the other, the fingers of an upturned hand brushing against her ankle.

She hadn’t looked again.

She heard a deep groan from the darkness.

“Arty!”

Her brother had rushed Morten Lundquist after Ellie had been struck, and he had been jabbed, hard, with the butt of the rifle. The blow had knocked him out, and he still hadn’t come around.

“Arty!”

He groaned again, but he didn’t lift his head.

“Mallory?” Ellie’s voice was weak and thin, shot through with pain.

“I’m here.”

Mallory felt Ellie lift her head from her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she said, her voice little more than a raspy croak.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Your brother?”

“They hit him. He was knocked out.”

She didn’t respond.

“They hit you, too.”

“You don’t say.”

“How do you feel?”

She heard Ellie exhale. “Not good. Like my head’s about to split.”

The handcuffs that they had used were loose on her wrists, and Mallory had thought that, if she tried hard enough, she might be able to force her way out of them. She had strained as hard as she could, but in the end, all she had done was to turn scrapes and abrasions into cuts that had quickly become bloody. She could feel a single warm droplet as it ran down the inside of her wrist into her palm.

“There’s an opening up there,” Ellie said. “Can you see where we’re going?”

There were no proper windows in back and the narrow slit in the panel that separated them from the driver was high up. Mallory tried to stand. She wasn’t quite tall enough to see through it and her balance was impeded by having her hands secured behind her back. She was quickly thrown against the side of the van as they took a sharp corner. She overbalanced and dropped down onto the bodies behind her. She shrieked, throwing herself off of them.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

“Mallory?”

“Sellar and Sturgess. They’re dead.”

“What?”

“Milton killed them. He did it like it was nothing. You didn’t see?”

“I was pretty out of it. They’re back there?”

“Yes.” Mallory slid away from them as much as she could and rested with her arms pressed between her back and the side of the vehicle. “What happened to you?”

“They jumped me at the station,” Ellie said. “The deputy—”

“Lundquist.”

“He shot the sheriff.”

Mallory hugged her knees to her chest.

“Where’s Milton?” Ellie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You better tell me what happened.”

She breathed in and out, composing her thoughts.

She told her about Leland turning up at the RV and trying to get her to come to the station.

She told her about Michael Callow.

She told her about how Milton had appeared out of nowhere, how he had killed Sellar and Sturgess just like that, as easy as shelling peas. She told her how she had watched him bury her old kitchen knife in Sturgess’s gut, yanking it all the way up even as he turned to face Leland, taking his gun from him and shooting Sellar in the head, like it was something he did every day.

She told her how Callow had grabbed her, how Milton had aimed the pistol, and how she had known that he was going to fire.

And then how Milton had been shot.

By Morten Lundquist.

What was happening to them?

What had they run into?

“They didn’t kill him?”

She shook her head. “Shot him in the arm. He got the RV started and drove off. The deputy and Callow went after him.”

“He’s gone?”

She nodded. “You think he’s abandoned us?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

Mallory squeezed her legs tighter, crushing them against her chest. She wished she had the same confidence.

“Who’s driving?” Ellie asked.

“Morris Finch. He’s a plumber. This is his van.”

“Mallory?” The voice was faint and befuddled. “Mallory?”

“I’m here, Arty!”

Lightning flashed, and she saw his head move as he slowly brought it up.

“Are you okay?”

“My head,” he mumbled.

“You got your ticket punched. You feel okay?”

“Dizzy.”

“Stay down there, then. It’ll clear.”

“Eric and Reggie are dead.”

“They got what was coming to them, Arty,” Mallory said, iron in her voice.

“Is Ellie here?”

“I’m here.”

Mallory heard her brother shuffle around in Ellie’s direction.

“Deputy Morten hit you, Ellie.”

“I’m okay. I’ll live.”

“Why did he hit you? She wasn’t doing nothing, was she, Mallory?”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand. Where are we?”

Mallory composed herself. She knew she would need to stay calm or else he would freak, and that would just make things worse. But she would have to say something. “We’re in the back of Morris Finch’s van.”

“Why?”

“Michael Callow and Tom Chandler are angry with us.”

“And Deputy Lundquist.”

“Yes, and Deputy Lundquist. They’re taking us someplace. I think they want to talk to us.”

“Why are they angry with us? Is it because of Mr. Milton?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think it might be. Just stay there, okay? It’ll all be straightened out soon.”

“And then we can go home?”

“Yes,” she said, trying very hard to hide the fear in her voice.

Ellie spoke for her. “That’s right, Arthur. It’ll all be straightened out, and then we can go home. Mallory, do you have a cellphone?”

“No, and it wouldn’t matter. The storm’s taken the network out.”

“Really?”

“Was on the news.”

“Maybe it’s fixed now. It’s worth a try. Do you think Sellar and Sturgess might have one?”

Her stomach flipped. “You want me to look?”

“I don’t know how easy it’d be for me to get over there.”

She swallowed and turned around so that her back was facing the two dead bodies. By leaning backwards a little she was able to reach over to them and pat them down. She felt something in the breast pocket of the body nearest her, reached her hand inside, and pulled out a Motorola cellphone. She turned her back to Ellie and backed into the middle of the van so that she could pass the phone across.

“Thanks.”

Mallory saw a faint green glow from the other side of the van. Ellie had activated the cellphone, and the light from the screen glowed.

“No signal.”

“It’s the whole state north of Wausau.”

“That’s great.”

The van rumbled onwards, taking them farther away from town and into the countryside beyond.

Ellie used the light from the cellphone to look around the inside of the van. Mallory saw racks of plumbing equipment above them, pipes and sockets and screws, and then, before she could stop herself, the confusion of arms and legs that was Sturgess and Sellar.

“Oh, God.”

“Mallory, I need you to do something for me,” Ellie said.

She closed her eyes, and she could still see them.

“Mallory.”

“Yes?”

“If I give you a number, will you be able to remember it?”

She opened her eyes and stared across at the faint outline of her brother. “Arty can. He’s great with numbers.”

That was an understatement. Arty had plenty of problems. But if there was one thing he was good at, it was remembering things. Mallory remembered the time when she had read aloud a page of the Truth telephone directory and he had recited back the first hundred names, just like that. The doctors they had seen when he was a little boy said that was one of the things that people with his condition could sometimes do.

“Arty,” she said, “I need you to pay special attention, okay? Agent Ellie needs you to remember a number. Can you do that for her?”

“Sure, Mallory.”

“It’s very important.”

“What is it? I’ll remember it. I’m good with numbers.”

“I know you are. Go on, Ellie.”

“Okay. Ready? 313-338-7786.”

Mallory recognised it as a Detroit telephone number. “Have you got it?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he said, as if what he had been asked to do, and the circumstances in which he had been asked to do it, were perfectly normal for him.

“Repeat it to me.”

“313-338-7786.”

“Good.”

“What do I need the number for?” he asked her.

“That’s my partner’s number. Agent Clayton. I don’t know where they’re taking us, but maybe there’s a chance one of us can get away. If we can, we need to call him.”

“The phones are down…”

“Maybe they’ll be fixed then. He’ll be able to help us.”

“Okay, Ellie. 313-338-7786. I got it.”

Ellie said, “You too, Mallory. You need to remember it too.”

“313-338-77—”

“7786,” Arty finished for her as she stalled.

“313-338-7786. Got it.” She tried to fix it in her mind, but she knew that she would forget.

“Well done,” Ellie said. “Now. When we get to where we’re going, I want you to do whatever they tell you. No attitude. No lip. Got it?”

“Yes,” Mallory said.

“Arty?”

“He’ll be fine.”

They were quiet. Mallory might not be able to see where they were going, but that didn’t mean she was helpless. She made sure she concentrated on everything else: how long they were travelling, the sounds that she could hear, the terrain that they passed over. The surface of the road was smooth for what she estimated was the first five minutes. Then, they rolled over a bump and then another bump, and she recognised the sound that the tyres on her car made when she crossed the railroad at the north end of town. They proceeded on asphalt for, she guessed, another ten minutes. When the van slowed down, the red taillights glowed through faulty housings, their light leaking into the back. They slowed right down, the axle creaking as they negotiated bumpy terrain.

“What happened to Mr. Milton?” Arty asked.

“He left,” Mallory said.

“But he’ll come back for us?”

“I don’t know.”

The van continued along the rough track for ten minutes, and then it swung around sharply to the right, the brake lights flashed again, and they slowed to a stop. The engine was turned off.

“Where are we?” Arty asked.

“I’m not sure.”

Mallory reflexively tensed her arms against the cuffs, but there was no give there, and all the effort did was make her wrists sore again.

She heard a door at the front of the van open and the sound of feet dropped down onto the ground. She heard footsteps and then voices.

A woman’s voice: “You want to tell me what’s going on? Seth says we got a problem.”

“In a minute, Magrethe,” answered a man.

“Seth says you’ve got two dead bodies in the back plus the two Stanton kids.”

“And an FBI agent. So, yes, Magrethe, I’d say Seth was right, we do got a problem.”

“Where’s Morten now?”

“Busy. Says he’ll be here presently. Probably on his way now.”

“Then you better tell me what in God’s name is going on tonight.”

“The agent and another man went up to the mine and arrested Michael and the boys.”

“What other man?”

“There was an Englishman in town, got into a brawl at Johnny’s a couple nights ago. Mallory Stanton set the whole thing up, the whole expedition into the woods. She roped the guy and the agent into it.”

“We know anything about him?”

“Name’s Milton. That’s all.”

“Where is he now?”

“Morten’s got it in hand. He won’t be a problem.”

“But he brought the boys back?”

“That’s right. Morten heard it over the radio, went to the jail, and busted them out.”

Mallory recognised the man’s voice. It was Morris Finch.

“What do you mean, he busted them out?”

“What I said: he busted them out. Lester was there. He shot him.”

“He shot Lester?”

“No choice, Magrethe. What else was he going to do? If he did nothing, everything would’ve gone to shit. Everything we’ve been working for. The militia, God's word. You reckon those boys would’ve been able to keep their mouths shut if the FBI had gotten hold of them? Shit, no. Not because they ain’t loyal, but because they ain’t the smartest. There was no choice. It was Lester or us, Magrethe. Morten did what he had to do.”

Magrethe. Seth. Mallory thought hard about that. Magrethe and Seth. The only Seth she knew had a farm out on the edge of town and, the more she thought about it, she was sure that Seth’s wife’s name began with an M.

“You know where Lars is?”

“Morten didn’t say. You can ask him.”

“He got a call before the lines all went down, took off like a scalded cat.”

“Morten will know. Come on, we got stuff to do. We got to put the agent and the Stantons out of the way for a bit. You got space in the other barn?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we going to do with the bodies?”

“We feed ’em to the pigs,” she said.

“Wish I never asked.”

Mallory heard footsteps splash through water.

“Do what they say,” Ellie hissed.

Mallory reached out with her leg and touched Arty’s knee with her foot. “Don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

“Okay, Mallory. I won’t.”

The handle turned, and the door opened. Morris Finch was standing there, water cascading from the brim of the wide hat he was wearing and his raincoat slick with run-off. He brought up a flashlight and shone it into the van. The beam shone into Mallory’s eyes, and she turned her head away.

“Out,” Finch said.

Mallory went first, getting her knees beneath her and then pushing up to her feet. She shuffled over to the door, stepping over the two bodies. Finch reached up and put his hands beneath her shoulders to help her jump down.

The rain lashed onto her as Mallory took the chance to look around. They were in an open yard. A large oak tree was off to one side, a lean-to beneath the wide spread of its boughs. There was a farmhouse on the other side of the yard, old and in need of repair. There were lights on in the downstairs windows, and a yellow finger stretched out into the yard from the front door, which had been left ajar. Mallory didn’t recognise the building, but although it was dark, the place had the feeling of open ground.

On the other side of the yard, opposite the farmhouse, was the track that they had followed to get to the farmhouse. Cars and pickup trucks were parked along the side of the road, and as she looked at them, she saw the lights of another car sweep across the barren fields as the driver turned off the main road. She could see the figures of people, just shadows in the darkness, hurrying through the rain.

Arty jumped down. He stumbled in a puddle and bumped up against her. Morris reached across to steady him.

“Come on,” Magrethe said. “I’m drowning out here.”

Mallory turned in the direction of her voice and saw her just on the other side of the van. In one hand, she held a child’s umbrella open above her head, Minnie Mouse on the pink canopy. It looked ridiculous. In her other hand, she had a shotgun pointed down to the ground, the stock wedged up beneath her armpit.

Finch reached into the van, caught Ellie beneath the shoulders, and pulled her out.

“Come on, Morris,” Magrethe snapped. “Let’s go.”

They walked on. The water drenched her, running down into her eyes and mouth, and since she couldn’t use her hands to clear it away, she had to duck her head instead. They went behind the lean-to, along a gravel path, around a waterlogged vegetable patch and then to one of two large barns that loomed out of the murkiness in front of them. One of the barns had been opened up, and a cascade of bright golden light poured out from the door. Mallory could see and hear people in the barn, and the figures she had seen hurrying from the cars in the lane trotted across and disappeared inside. To the side of the barn, Mallory could see the tractor cab of a large Freightliner semi. The trailer, if there was one, was out of sight behind the barn.

Magrethe went to the door of the other, smaller barn and unlocked it with a key that she had in her hand. She opened the door and stood back a step. Finch raised his flashlight. Mallory saw agricultural machinery arranged around the inside of the large barn. There was a riding lawnmower, a plough attachment that would be towed behind a tractor, bags of feed and, wrapped in black polythene wrapping, bundles of silage.

Magrethe levelled the shotgun. “In. Get.”

“Can you take the cuffs off?” she asked.

“All right,” Finch said.

Magrethe scowled at him. “What are you doing?”

“They’re kids, Magrethe. The shed’s secure, right?”

“I guess.”

“So there’s nothing to worry about.”

Mallory turned so that Finch could get to the cuffs. He worked at them for a moment, and then the clasp opened and they fell free. He turned to Arty and released his cuffs, too.

“What about her?” Mallory said, looking at Ellie.

“I don’t think so.”

Finch quickly frisked all three of them. He found the cellphone that Ellie had kept and pocketed it. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned them. “You’re out in the middle of nowhere. There’s nowhere to go. No one will hear you. You try to get out, we’ll just cuff you again, fix you to the wall. Understand?”

Mallory rubbed her sore wrists.

“Now,” Magrethe said. “Get into the shed.”

Arty hurried across until he was alongside her. “Mallory?” he said.

“It’s all right.”

“I don’t want to.”

“What is it?” the woman snapped irritably.

“He doesn’t like the dark,” she explained.

She rolled her eyes. “You tell him to get in there or we’ll throw him in.”

Mallory ignored her, the harshness in her voice, and turned to her brother. “It’s okay, Arty. I’m here, too. I’ll go in with you. We’ll go in together.”

She saw the fear on his face as he nodded that he would do that.

“Everyone says he’s simple,” Finch said to Magrethe as they stepped inside.

“Simple?” she said disdainfully. “People walk around on eggshells when it comes to things like that. It’s better to call a spade a spade. He’s a retard, Morris, that’s what he is. A fucking retard.”

The door clanged shut behind them, and they were plunged into total darkness.

“Mallory!” Arty exclaimed fearfully.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m here. Stay where you are.” She shuffled her feet in the direction of his voice until she bumped up against him. “Here I am.”

“It’s dark.”

“I know it is.”

Mallory waited for a moment, willing her eyes to adjust. There was a little grey light that came from the roof, and after a moment, she began to make out the outline of the equipment that she had seen from outside. She stepped ahead carefully, leading her brother, until they had crossed the shed and were up against the wall.

“Mallory?” Arty said plaintively. “Mallory, I don’t like it in here.”

She waited a moment to reply, waiting until she could control the quaver that she knew would be in her voice. “We’ll be just fine,” she said. “Sit down next to me.”

He did as he was told.

She lowered herself to the ground. It was dry, a minor blessing. She rested her back against the corrugated metal wall.

“We’ll be fine,” Ellie said.

“You feel okay?” Mallory asked. “Your head?”

“Just a bit dizzy. It’s not a problem. You should both try to get some sleep.”

Mallory waited for Arty to settle in beside her. He lowered himself so that he could rest his head in her lap, and she stroked his thick, dark curls. She said again, “We’ll be fine,” although it was under her breath and for her benefit as much as for his.

The trouble was, she didn’t believe it.

She wondered where John Milton was.

Chapter 26

Seth Olsen had two big barns near the house. The Stanton kids and the FBI agent were in the one where he kept his old equipment. They had the spare nitromethane and fertiliser in there, too. The other barn was where Seth usually kept the hay bales, silage and feed, but they had emptied it out two months ago so that it could be used as the militia’s gathering space and armoury instead.

Lundquist took Seth and Magrethe to one side. He told them what had happened to Lars. Seth clenched his jaw, the crinkles that appeared around his eyes the only indication of the impact the news must have had. His wife sobbed, just once, Seth reaching out to take her shoulder, but she shook him off. She snapped that she was fine, but the colour had drained from her face and her eyes were filmed with tears that didn’t spill. Magrethe was tough. They both were. Lundquist knew the news would set them both implacably to the cause. He led them in prayer for a moment and then made his way inside.

The barn had been decorated. A mural of a crowned sword bisected by a Z-like slash, the emblem of the Sword of God, was emblazoned on the wall behind his pulpit. A Nazi battle flag was hung on the facing wall. This church’s crucifix was a sword with an Iron Cross on its hilt, the handiwork of a disciple named Kenny Woichek. A portrait of Saint George and the Dragon hung from the pulpit. One of the dragon’s horns was topped by the Star of David.

Lundquist had needed a headquarters for the militia, and the farm had been perfect. It was out of town and impossible to approach without giving good warning first. Seth had eight hundred acres of land, a huge expanse that meant that there was plenty of space for them to train without any fear that they would be seen or heard. Lundquist had worked his men and women hard, preparing them for the role that the Lord had prophesied for them. He had turned it into a guerrilla training camp, complete with firing ranges, stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, and accommodation for everyone who needed it. They had built a facility they called Silhouette City, where his soldiers could fire at targets of Barack Obama, Jeh Johnson, and Janet Yellen. There were checkpoints, and a log cabin served as a guardhouse along the only road that offered access.

When the time came, when the final trumpet was sounded, the farm would be an Ark for God’s people.

The men and women of the militia were all gathered inside, bundled in ragged clothes and military surplus jackets. The barn was lit by lanterns that Seth had hung from the rafters. The light was warm and golden, the flames flickering this way and that, sending dancing shadows against the walls. He climbed into the pulpit and looked out at them all.

There were thirty of them, and they had turned out with impressive alacrity. That was some good discipline right there, Lundquist thought, complimenting himself, damned impressive. He had drilled them well, made them understand how important it was that they operated as an effective, cohesive unit. He used the things that he had learned himself during his career in the army, and his lessons were being learned. The word of God he had been working to fulfil demanded unswerving, absolute loyalty and obedience. This was as good a demonstration as any that they were on the right track.

The night ahead would present further opportunities to prove that.

He cleared his throat and raised his voice to address all of them. “What we have here is our first real test since the Lord spoke to me. The first test since we started to work on delivering the Word of the Lord, working towards His prophecy to take our country back. We’ve had the federal authorities in town for a week, and we just about saw them off. We would have done it, too, until a fellow who was passing through got involved, went up into the woods, and brought our boys back down again.”

“The Englishman?” Barry Forshaw asked.

“That’s right, Barry. The Englishman. His name is John Milton.”

“Who is he?”

“We’re looking into that.” He stared out at the sea of expectant faces, all of them hanging on his words. “Now, I’m not happy with how easy our boys made it for him to bring them back, but that doesn’t mean we should underestimate what this fellow is capable of. From what Private Callow and Private Chandler have said, he’s extremely proficient. He knows how to operate in the wild, and he knows his way around firearms. That’s about all we have on him right now, except to say that he’s caused us a whole heap of trouble.”

“Is the sheriff dead?” Vernon Smith interrupted. “I heard that he was dead.”

“Milton delivered the boys to Lester, and the FBI agent was about to call the marshals to come and pick them up. That would have been an end to our chance of bringing God's word to fruition. Couldn’t have that happen, so I took action. What we are doing is more important than one man and, like we all know, there was no way Lester would have understood us and what we are doing. So I shot him. God have mercy on his soul.”

One of the men, Percy Fisherton’s boy, let out a loud whoop, a few of the others sniggering at it.

“Quiet. Lester was a good man, and what had to be done gave me no pleasure. The Englishman should be dead, too, but he killed Private Sellar, Private Sturgess, Private Olsen, and Private Pelham.”

The atmosphere changed as if at the flick of a switch. Some of the men went slack jawed. Others mouthed “four” with disbelieving expressions.

“That’s right, four. That’s how serious this is. How serious he is. He’s killed four men, and then he got away into the woods. And we can’t let him stay out there. We need to find him.”

There were murmurs of angry assent.

“We know he’s tough and resourceful, but we also know that he’s injured. I put a shot in his shoulder. Now, a man with a wound like that isn’t going to be able to cover long distances, plus it’s night, and he doesn’t know the woods like we do. So, you ask me, what he’s going to do is find himself somewhere to shelter from the storm out there, hunker down, try to fix his arm, and then make his move tomorrow. The state police will have a cordon in place by the time he can get to the boundaries, so he’s not going to find it easy to get out. He’s going to be hiding in hills and woods no more than twenty square miles across. And we’re going to have thirty armed men and women who know those woods going in there after him. Bearing those things in mind, you want to tell me how in God’s green earth that son of a bitch is going to get away from us?”

No one demurred.

“That’s right. He isn’t.”

“What about the police?”

“What about them?”

“If they get him first?”

“Wouldn’t be a problem if they did. I put out the APB, called state, said that he killed the sheriff, Private Olsen, Private Pelham, and the agent. As far as they’re concerned, this is a multiple cop killer. Most likely, they shoot him on sight and solve this for us. If they don’t, if he somehow manages to surrender, he doesn’t know anything about all this”—he waved his hand at the armaments at the back of the barn—“or the truck and what we’re going to do with it, so he can’t do anything about that. If he denies he killed those men, then it’s the word of a drifter who ignored Lester’s instructions to stay out of town and then beat up two tourists in Johnny’s against the word of the local police. No, sir. How’s that going to play out for him?”

“Badly,” Forshaw called out.

“That’s right, Barry. It’s going to play out badly.”

The men and women nodded in agreement. Lundquist could see that they were impressed. They knew that he was clever and cunning, and they knew that he was a strong leader. They knew that he was filled with the spirit. They all knew it. Lundquist got a thrill of excitement from seeing their reaction, just like he always did. God had chosen him for this responsibility and the spirit had filled his soul, like water pouring into an empty vessel. He was overflowing with it.

“What about the VP?” Paula McMahon called out.

“What about him?”

“It’s soon, right. Three days he’s coming. This has got to affect it?”

“No,” Lundquist said. “It does not.”

The vice president was campaigning in Minnesota over the course of the next week. Lundquist had gotten hold of his schedule from a buddy over in the Minneapolis PD and knew that he was going to be stopping for a photo opportunity at a little truck stop on the outskirts of the city. Mom-and-pop kind of place, lots of open space around it, difficult for the secret service to lock down. The kind of place where it would be almost impossible to stop a man who was full of the Word of God and not afraid of dying.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m doubting you, Colonel, but how can you be sure?”

“It’s not going to be relevant, Paula. Because we’re going to have ourselves a little hunt.”

He pointed to the back of the room, where Seth Olsen was bringing out the weapons that they had been assembling with the money that the boys had been liberating from the banks. They had a hundred grand’s worth of equipment and ordinance: automatic rifles, carbines, shotguns, pistols. Thousands of rounds of ammo. “Get yourself equipped. We’re going to make three squads. Each squad will be led by one of the best woodsmen we got. Jesse Kay?”

Kay was a tracker, short and wiry as a speed freak. “Yes, sir?”

“You take ten men and go west into the woods from South Boundary Road.”

Kay saluted him.

“Ben Teale?”

“Yes, sir?” Teale was a park ranger. No one knew more about the woods than he did.

“You take the next ten, go up to Little Carp River Road and then cut in to the east.”

Teale saluted.

“Walker Price, you and me get the last ten. We’re going in the woods where he went in.”

He looked out at them again. They were men and women of God, His Holy brigade, and they were going to do great things in His name. Satan had wrapped his arms around their country and, if left unchecked, he would drag them all down with him back to Hell. Lundquist was not going to let that happen. The thought of their glory, soon to be achieved, filled him with pride, and he swallowed down the emotion that had caught in his throat. He raised his voice.

“In case you need reminding, I’m going to tell you what’s at stake tonight. America has drifted far from the Founding Fathers’ dream of a white, Christian nation. Jews and non-whites are defiling the Promised Land. Life has become bitter. The farms and factories are closing, small towns are emptying, the fabric of society is shredding. Crime goes unpunished; school prayers are unsaid. Divorce, abortion, drug abuse, and homosexuality threaten our way of life. In the cities, people get rich manipulating paper while farmers are forced to sell their crops for less than it costs to coax them from the soil. The Zionist Occupation Government conspires to rule the earth. The media pours out a steady stream of filth and deception. And they have the audacity to accuse people like us of trying to overthrow the government? We just want it back!”

There were exclamations of “Yes!” and cries of “Say on!” A woman, her arms upraised, looked faint. Lundquist felt the sweat on his face, left it untouched and pulled down his right sleeve to reveal his tattoo. He turned his wrist so that it faced the others, clenched his fist and raised his arm.

The others mirrored his salute.

He recited the words of Revelations 1:3 that he had chosen as their mantra: “‘Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.’”

The others responded, chanting out the final words: “For the time is at hand.”

“‘A sword, a sword is sharpened and also polished.’”

The others joined in with him, their left hands pressed over their hearts, reciting the scripture with lusty enthusiasm. “‘Sharpened to make a dreadful slaughter, polished to flash like lightning. And He has given it to be polished, that it may be handled; This sword is sharpened and it is polished to be given into the hand of the slayer.’”

“And what did Jesus say?”

“‘Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth. I came not to bring peace but a sword.’”

“And who are we?”

“The Sword of God.”

“This is the word of the Lord.”

“Praise be to God.”

“Amen.”

“Amen!”

They took communion after that, passing around a tray of shot glasses filled with grape juice and tiny rectangular wafers. When they had finished, there were cheers and shouts of excitement. Lundquist saw the fire in their eyes. They would do their duty by God. They were like a pack of wild dogs, he thought, and he was about to unleash them.

Chapter 27

Milton had entered the forest from a different point than the previous day, and he was soon lost. It was thickly wooded and on a slight incline, a gentle slope that he could soon feel in the back of his calves as he ascended. It was rocky underfoot, ridges that tore out of the greensward and shallow ravines and crevasses that plunged down almost without warning. The land reminded him of Kosovo, of the time he had dropped behind enemy lines with orders to melt into the night until a particular target revealed himself. He would take his shot and be absorbed into the background again.

Milton was comfortable in this kind of terrain. His history with the regiment had included weeks spent living off the land. He had trained in the jungle in Borneo. There was nothing here that was unfamiliar or daunting to him.

He kept running, his legs burning and the pain in his left arm pulsing every time his feet struck the earth. At least it had stopped raining, and above him, the clouds had parted to admit a little silvery moonlight. Not much, but enough for him to see where he was going.

He followed the terrain as it led upwards. He needed to climb, to get as high as he could before he stopped. He needed to gain his bearings. He needed to work out how far he was from the field and which direction he should take.

He could feel the blood against his skin, a wet slickness that had soaked through his shirt, the curtain that he had wrapped around his arm, and into the lining of his jacket. Branches slapped and scraped, brambles gouged him as he ploughed between bushes, his face soon lacerated by a network of tiny cuts. He broke free from the tree line into a space that had been logged, a collection of stumps and trunks that had been stacked, ready to be collected. Ahead of him was a steep rise up to a plateau, a climb on a shifting trail of loose rocks and gravel. He sprinted at it, managed the first few steps until his momentum was halted, and then bent to power up, pushing his feet into the unreliable give of the surface, his hands pressed into the sharp stones to help keep him upright. He churned upwards, an avalanche of scree scattering behind him. The footing became firmer the nearer to the top he climbed and, eventually, he was able to stand again. He stopped, his muscles burning and his breath coming in hungry gulps.

He turned and looked back in the direction he had come from. The forest stretched out beyond him to the east and west, as far as the eye could see in each direction. He knew from his earlier journey that there were fire breaks and small roads cut into the trees, but they were impossible to see from here. The terrain continued to climb to the north, the trees becoming ever more sparse the higher the ground rose. He turned to the south and saw the beginning of the forest, the field of corn beyond it and, behind that, the line of the railroad and the hazy lights of Truth. He squinted to the southeast, but it was too dark to make out the Stantons’ Winnebago.

He waited for another minute, his hands on his knees as he filled his lungs with oxygen. He turned and looked north to the shallow hills and peaks that characterised this part of Michigan. He needed to keep moving. He needed to put some distance between himself and Lundquist and his men. He needed to get as far away from the field of corn as he could.

He saw the line of a stream, five hundred yards away to the northeast. He headed for it. The clouds rolled in again, and soon all he could see were the outlines of the larger rocks and the bunched trunks of the trees. The stream was small, little more than a trickle, maybe even run-off that had found its way into an old winterbourne. He stayed close to the water, stopping every now and again to listen, but all he could hear were the noises of the natural world around him: the chirping of crickets, the shrieking call of a nocturnal predator high above, the gentle tinkle of the water as it passed over bedrock. He wondered whether Lundquist would have access to dogs and, assuming that he might, he ploughed through the water, hoping to mask his scent. He leapt out on the opposite bank and pressed ahead.

The terrain descended into a low open hollow, and gravity pulled Milton down in a headlong plunge, his feet sinking to the ankles in the loose shale. He raced at speed into the base of the depression, catching his right foot in an uncovered branch, thrusting out his left and barely managing to scramble away without falling. He was sweating heavily, and his arm throbbed. The stream wound its way through the hollow, and he followed it, the ground becoming soft and boggy underfoot. It turned this way and that until it led up the opposite slope. The incline grew steeper and steeper until the water was passing between two steep shoulders of rock.

There was no point in continuing. This would do. Milton walked to the edge of the water and splashed it across his face for a moment. He was already sodden from the earlier rain, but the water was fresh and invigorating, and it washed the sweat, blood, and muck away.

He looked at his surroundings. The angle of the ravine was steep, but it looked as if there was a trail that picked a path along the more accessible portions. The path ahead was hemmed in by trees, mountain ash, beech and oak, and the cover from the leaves was dense. He walked to the rock face on his side of the river, followed it up and, after twenty paces, found an outcrop that reached out to provide a natural ceiling.

He hurried across to it.

The break in the storm had been temporary and, now that the thunderhead had rolled back across the moon, the rains were falling once again. He clambered up to the rocky outcrop. The ravine bulged outwards here, and the face was twenty feet from the water’s edge. There was a carpet of scree beneath the ceiling that was, at least where it was close to the overhang, reasonably dry. The outcrop itself was sheltered by a canopy of leaves from large red and silver maple trees, and a comfortable nook was fashioned between two large dogwood bushes. Milton decided that the spot was as good as it was likely to get, and besides, he was tired and starting to feel very cold.

And his arm ached. It really ached, but he didn’t think it was getting any worse. It could wait. His priority had to be shelter and then fire. He needed to get warm and dry his wet clothes. He would risk hypothermia if he didn’t.

Shelter first.

He went back down the slope into the trees and located three six-foot branches that had fallen to the ground. They were reasonably straight, and notched with nubs and small branches all the way down their lengths. He took the bag and removed the kitchen knife that he had taken from the RV, using it to saw into the ends of two of the branches, then used his hands to split them apart into shallow Vs. He rested those two branches against the rock wall and slotted the third branch into the grooves that he had cut. He used the nylon cord to lash the central pole to the struts and then stood the frame against the wall at a sixty degree angle, rolling two small boulders to provide stability at the base and a head start on the thatching he was going to have to do. He went back down to the woodland floor and collected a double armful of coniferous branches and large leaves. He started at the bottom of the frame, above the log, and worked up, thatching the smaller branches and then stuffing the holes with the vegetation. He returned to the wood again. A large pine had fallen, and since the wood inside rotted faster than the bark outside, there were large plates of it that could be easily removed and used as tiles. It took him thirty minutes, but, when he was done, he had shelter from the rain.

Now, fire.

He went back down to the trees and gathered tinder: dry grass he found in the lee of a tree, dead cleavers, nettles and parsley, honeysuckle bark, pine needles, fluffy seed heads, dry lichens and mosses. He returned to the outcrop and used the knife to dig out a shallow fire pit, lining it with small rocks and handfuls of scree.

He took the Beretta from his pocket. One round left. Hypothermia was his most immediate danger, and he couldn’t waste time waiting for a fire to start. He would have to sacrifice the bullet. He released the magazine, racked the slide, and the round fell into his hand. He gathered up the tinder and fashioned it into a nest and added a squirt of the alcohol-based sanitising gel. He used his knife to prise off the end of the bullet and poured out the gunpowder onto a dry shard of wood. He placed the tinder over the gunpowder and used his fire steel to drop a cascade of sparks onto it. The gunpowder fizzed and spat, and a flame caught hold. He curled his hands around it, feeling the negligible fire on his calloused skin, shielding and shepherding it, and then, as it took better hold, he added bigger pieces of kindling, careful not to smother it, nursing the flame at each step until it was strong enough to take the dry twigs that he had scavenged. It took him thirty minutes, but when he was satisfied, the fire was healthy, and it radiated a strong heat.

All right, he thought. Now the arm.

He took off his jacket and sweater and unwound the torn curtain. He set up the flashlight so that the beam played back against him. He could examine the wound more carefully now. The bullet had passed through his bicep and left through his tricep. That was fortunate on the one hand, not so fortunate on the other. While there was no slug to remove, the journey through his skin and muscle had slowed the bullet down, the friction exerting enough force to start spinning it. The entry wound was neat and tidy, a perfect little blackened circle that would heal on its own with no need for any serious ministration on his part. The exit wound, though, the round punching out more slowly and rotating as it did so, was wide and messy.

He went to the water’s edge and rinsed out the grit and debris and, for a moment at least, he numbed the pain. He slathered sanitising gel over the two wounds, wincing from the sudden sting. He reached into the bag and took out the sealed plastic container that held the first-aid kit. There was a needle and thread, but he knew the wound was not ready to be sutured yet. It would be better for it to be left open so that if it did become infected, the pus could drain away. As long as it could drain, it was unlikely to become life-threatening, regardless of how unpleasant it might look or smell. He unfolded one of the dressings and laid it across the entry wound. He attached it with a roll of adhesive tape and then repeated the procedure for the exit wound.

Milton spread the remaining ferns on the ground and lay down on them, feeling the warmth on his skin. The smoke from the fire issued out of the chimney he had left against the rock, but he wasn’t concerned. It would be invisible in the dark, and the glow of the flames would be masked by the thatch and hidden in the cleft of the ravine. He looked at the flickering glow as it cast patterns against the moss-covered rock, picking out a glittering vein of quartz that ran down from the top and disappeared into the scree. He added more wood, raising the fire to a happy blaze.

He closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept for nearly forty hours. He needed to rest. He trusted his body to wake him with the dawn, his habit for twenty years, and then, the fire warm on his face, he was quickly submerged by sleep.

Chapter 28

Morten Lundquist saw his son at the same time as he heard the barking from the field behind him. Michael had built a bonfire, and he was sitting in front of it, cross-legged, facing into the woods. He had a rifle resting across his lap. Lundquist tramped on, leading his squad of six men out of the field and down to the fringe of the woods. The fire was warm.

“Morning, Pops,” Michael said to him. “Everything all right?”

“All good.”

The men settled around it, some extending their hands to the flames to drive away the cold damp of the early morning.

“Any sign of him?”

“He hasn’t come out, least not this way.”

Lundquist grunted, not ready to start praising his boy after the eternal fuck up he had brought down on them all by letting the Englishman and the agent round them up in the first place.

The sound of barking drew closer.

Michael looked up.

“It’s Walker,” Lundquist said.

He swivelled and looked over his shoulder. He could see Walker Price coming towards them on the track that cut through the cornfield, his three hunting dogs surging ahead, straining at the master leash. Walker was a lieutenant in the militia, a good and trustworthy man. He was a hunter, too, and a good one. His dogs had keen noses, and he knew that they would be able to track the Englishmen wherever he went. They would give them the advantage in finding him. He supposed that he could have assigned Walker to another team, but, he admitted, he wanted Milton all for himself. God willing, he wanted to be the one to make an example of him. It would be perfect, a chance to underline his leadership just before they started to follow God's word.

Lundquist stretched his arms. He hadn’t been out in the open like this for years. Hell, he couldn’t recall the last time. He remembered nights that he had spent with his old man, weekends that involved hauling their gear up and down the hills on the other side of the peninsula, days spent outside because the old bastard said he needed to be “toughened up” and this was the best way to do it.

Lundquist came from an old military family. His father said he had been one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, that he had run guerrilla units in the Philippines during World War Two and that he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel at twenty-six, a full decade ahead of his army cohorts. “I killed Japs,” he bragged. “Plenty of them with a knife.”

His father had been a hard, severe man, and Lundquist knew that some of that tough attitude had been passed down to him. That was the reason why he had always been hard on his own kids when they were growing up. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? Like father, like son. Michael had been brought up by the slut in Green Bay that he had knocked up on that drunken evening with Lester twenty-five years ago. He had no hand in the boy’s upbringing until he had come to his door, five years ago, a stupid expression on his face, his hand held out, saying, “Dad?”

Lundquist remembered that day like it was yesterday.

The sound of the dogs drew closer.

His thoughts settled on the story that he would tell when the authorities came back into town. He knew that it would hold up. There was the record of John Milton’s arrest after the brawl with the out-of-towners in Johnny’s Bar. Witnesses, too, if he needed them. That was evidence of his violent disposition. Lester had written up how he had picked the man up on the outskirts of Truth and driven him to the other side with the instruction that he keep on walking. Milton had ignored him, evidence of his disregard for authority and, maybe, something else to add to his motive.

Lundquist thought about it, laid the story out, and it all made perfect sense.

What had happened next? Milton had come back to find Lester, shot him, and then fled as Lundquist and Olsen arrived just in time. They had gone in pursuit, and Olsen had found him and had been killed for it. George Pelham ran into him as they had given pursuit, and he had been killed, too. Three policemen dead. Shit, Lundquist would be able to bring the National Guard down on his head if he wanted to.

He took out his tin of tobacco, rolled a cigarette, and lit it.

“What’s the plan?” Michael asked him.

“We let the dogs find his scent, and then chase him down.”

“Now?”

“No. We’ll wait until dawn. A couple hours. I want some light.”

“But he could’ve kept going. He could be halfway to the lake by now.”

Lundquist had a speck of tobacco in his mouth; he spat it out. “You see his arm? How he couldn’t carry it right? No way on earth he can keep going without stopping to get that seen to. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing; maybe we find him bled out somewhere.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Michael said. “He’s tough.”

Lundquist drew down on the cigarette. “‘But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’ You know what that means, Michael?”

“Patience.”

“Patience. God willing, we’ll find him.”

“Yes, Pops.”

“He tell you anything that might tell us who he is?”

“Nah.” Michael shook his head. “He’s pretty quiet. But he’s good with a gun, and he can handle himself. He took all four of us down, right?”

“Says more about you than it does about him.”

“I’ve apologised for that. Won’t happen again.”

“Make sure it doesn’t.”

Lundquist knew that he was riding him, but he knew that it was his responsibility to correct the flaws in his character. He thought of the words in Proverbs: “‘Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.’” That was a message that he would do well to heed. Michael needed discipline in his life. He was full of the foolishness and stupidity of youth, and Lundquist intended to see that it was all erased. Only when that was done would he feel comfortable in trusting the boy completely.

The nine of them sat around the fire, waiting for dawn to break. Lundquist was anxious to start, but it wasn’t difficult to remember what Milton had already done to four of his soldiers. The man was dangerous. He would be even more dangerous in the dark.

No, sir, he thought. This is better. Balance the disadvantage of giving him a little head start against the danger of getting yourself killed. That’s not a tough call to make.

Michael had been chomping at the bit. He tried to persuade him again that they should get going, how they were giving him a chance to get away. He had been persistent, on and on at him for a full five minutes until it had started to look like he was questioning his orders, and Lundquist decided he had no choice but to shut him down. He had made a cruel jab at him about the mess up at the mine, embarrassed him in front of the others, but it had quietened him for the time being.

Lundquist looked through the flames at him now, watched as he hugged his legs to his chest and stared into the fire with a baleful expression. He had the passion of the zealot mixed with the insecurities of a young man who was lost in the world.

He needed guidance. He needed the succour of God’s word to help him see the righteous path. Lundquist would help him find that.

He was reminded again of how Michael always tried so hard to impress him. He wasn’t a headshrinker, but all his time in the police meant that he had come to see plenty of human life, and he thought he could read people pretty well. Michael was easy to work out: Lundquist had abandoned him as a kid and, now that he had found him again, he was doing everything he could to impress him, show him that he was worthy of his love.

Yeah, well.

That had been useful to start with. Lundquist needed good young men, men who would be loyal and who he could trust, and his own flesh and blood was the perfect place to start. It had been easy enough for him to show the kid where the country was going wrong and who was to blame for it all. He was ready to be persuaded, like a bottle into which Lundquist could pour all of God’s teachings. Lundquist showed him what was happening to the country, how intrusive politicians were stripping away their rights, softening them up, getting ready to subjugate them. Fattening them up like hogs for the slaughter. Michael was a willing student. He had seen the truth in it.

The boy had been working at the gas station on the edge of town. There was no profit in that for the militia, so Lundquist told him that he needed to sign up for the army. It would be useful training, he said. And wasn’t it kind of ironic, getting the federal government to train the soldiers that Lundquist would use to bring it down? And, he knew, it would be another chance for Michael to see what the politicians were doing to America. It would show him how the government was an evil entity, Satan’s puppet, perpetrating violence on its own people and on others abroad.

It had worked.

Michael had been a good soldier. He had served for three years, Iraq for the most part, his commanding officers commending him as the epitome of infantry, but when Lundquist felt his training was complete, he called him home. He had fallen in with the three other boys — Sellar, Sturgess, and Chandler — and recruited them, too, bringing them back to Truth with him. He had left for the war a believer, but he came back again a zealot. He was passionate and hot headed, but with the right direction he had demonstrated that he could be effective. He seemed to exert swing over the other boys in his crew, too. Lundquist had seen the way they all looked to follow his lead, and had seen the way his instinct to violence had kept them in line.

The Sword of God needed money for armaments. Lundquist had been thinking about how easy it would be to hit the banks hereabouts for years. He could use his police credentials to get information on their security set ups that would have been impossible otherwise. He had worked it all out. He would craft the plans, and Michael and the others could carry them out. He ironed out the risks that their inexperience might have created and turned them into a smooth and effective crew. He suggested that they use dirt bikes to get in and out of the towns, following routes that he had plotted in advance to make sure that it was practically impossible to chase them. He knew about the old mine up by the lake and suggested that they should hole up there for a week after each job, at least until the temperature had cooled down.

Michael had not needed persuading to get involved, and he had delivered the others just like he said he would.

The first four heists had been flawless.

Houghton.

Ironwood.

Barksdale.

Duluth.

Then Marquette, and the dead guard.

He should have called a halt to it then, but he had been greedy. Each time they had returned to the mine with sacks full of money.

The money went a long way. Guns, ammunition, explosives. Everything that they needed.

It was difficult to turn the flow off.

So they had dropped down into Wisconsin instead.

Wausau.

Green Bay.

No more problems.

It had been going well.

Until now, and the Stanton kids, the FBI.

Until John Milton.

But Lundquist was on top of it.

All of it.

He would get it straightened out.

Michael was tending to the fire, dropping a large branch across the middle of it, the sap spitting and hissing as the wood started to combust. The shadows around the camp were fading, the early dawn light spreading lazily up from the horizon. It would stay dim for another twenty minutes, and then the sun would rise, and the darkness would be pushed away.

Lundquist looked into the depths of the forest. John Milton would be watching the same sunrise. Wherever it was that he had hidden overnight, it would feel a lot less secure with the darkness banished for the day.

The dogs became agitated.

He turned and saw Leland Mulligan approaching through the field. He had sent him back into town earlier to check that everything was in hand.

“About time,” he said impatiently when the deputy had reached the fire.

Leland spread his hands helplessly. He was another youngster who had been easy for Lundquist to recruit. His late parents had been God-fearing folk, and they had brought their son up the right way.

“Well? How did it go?”

“Good. The kids and the agent are locked up tighter than a duck’s ass. Magrethe and Morris will keep an eye on them. They ain’t going nowhere.”

“The state police?”

“Just like you said. The men they had available, they sent them out right away last night. They’re getting in position right now, stationed just like you said, boxed him right in. They’ve promised to double the men, gonna bring the late shift in early. He’s not going to find it easy to get through the line.”

“Good.” Lundquist finished his roll-up and flicked it into the fire. “What about Olsen?”

Leland winced. “That was one nasty crash, Lundquist. The fire department had to cut the car in half to get him out. Flipped over five, six times. I’m surprised Milton got out of it in one piece.”

“George?”

“Coming to bring his body back to the morgue. You ask me, that there was a broken neck. Whoever this dude is, he ain’t interested in love taps. I think he’s serious.”

“That so?” Lundquist said sarcastically as he rolled another cigarette. “Leave the thinking to me, Leland, all right? It’s not what you’re good at. What else?”

He indicated the hounds with a sullen shrug. “I found Milton’s pack like you said.” He held up a large plastic evidence bag into which clothes had been stuffed.

Walker Price brought the dogs over. They strained hard on the leash, barking avidly.

Lundquist took the bag and opened it, pulling out a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Neither of them had been washed. He tossed them to Walker, who knelt down as his dogs bounded around him, nudging him with their muzzles, their tails wagging furiously. They buried their noses into the clothes, breathing in Milton’s scent, and then turned towards the woods. The lead dog was a bitch that Walker called Blue. She lifted her head, holding the point, her tail held out behind her.

“She got it?”

“She does,” Walker said. The other dogs picked up the trail, too, one of them starting to howl. “Look at them. They’re practically begging to be let off the leash. I don’t think this is going to be difficult, Morten.”

Lundquist nodded his satisfaction.

Leland took another large bag and opened it up. Inside were a dozen bacon rolls. The men took one each and ate hungrily. There were two flasks of coffee, too, and cups for them to share. Lundquist ate and drank, the nourishment giving him a jolt of energy.

He looked around at the posse that they had assembled: him, Leland Mulligan, Walker Price, Michael, Thomas Chandler, Larry Maddocks, Harley Ward, Dylan Fox, Randy Watts, and Archie McClennan. Ten of them. That ought to be more than enough. If Milton was still in the forest, and he was sure that he was, there would be no easy way for him to get out. They would pick up his scent and track him down. And there would be no arrest. They would bring him back in a body bag. Milton was a cop killer, after all. They would come back into Truth as heroes.

They would do God’s will.

Lundquist felt a buzz of excitement.

This was an old-fashioned manhunt.

Milton was the prey, and he was the hunter.

There was nowhere to hide.

I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch. I’m coming for you, and I’m going to shoot you dead.

Chapter 29

Milton woke. It was dark, he thought, and then he saw that it wasn’t, that light was edging in through the gaps in the thatched screen propped against the overhang, obscuring the sun. He closed his eyes for a moment, uncertain where he was and how he had come to be here, and tried to stitch together the fragments of memories that he could recall. The sound of water from the rushing river was audible, a steady musical tinkle, and it all came back to him in a rush. He surged upright, cracking his head against the rocky overhang. He lowered himself again, touching his scalp, blood staining his fingertips.

Wonderful.

The fire had worked its way through the logs and branches and had reduced them to a blackened pile of ash, just a few embers left. Milton swung his legs around and pressed up with his arm. The rush of pain was sudden and shocking, and he remembered the gunshot wound.

He remembered. The crazy rush of last night, the flight in the RV, the train, hiding out in the crop as the police searched for him, the man whose neck he had snapped, the sprint into the woods.

He crouched down next to the pit and blew on the embers to nurse them, gently sprinkling the rest of the tinder across them and then nurturing the flames that resulted, adding the rest of his store of dry vegetation and, when that was alight, the smaller twigs. He had thought that the thatch was thick enough to offer shelter, but he had either miscalculated or the wind had shifted overnight, because now the rocky wall was damp with moisture, and his clothes were wet again. He laid a thicker log onto the merry fire, nursed it alight, and then took off his jacket and trousers and draped them across the branch again to try to dry out the worst of the damp.

He sat back down on his bed and gingerly raised his left arm so that he could look at the damage in the light. He carefully removed the dressings. The entry wound hadn’t become infected. The exit wound, though, was different. The jagged gash was unpleasant to look at, and it smelled bad, too. The flesh at the edges was black and rotting, most likely already dead. He would have to do something about it before it got too much worse.

And then he remembered.

Ellie.

Mallory and Arthur.

Shit, he thought. Shit.

What had he blundered into?

What should he do?

His instincts told him to get going right now, to flee, to set his back to the sun and just head west. He had the benefit of a decent head start and a detailed training in just this sort of warfare. He would be able to live off the land until he was far enough away to find a town and work out, as discreetly as he could, what had happened back in Truth.

But he couldn’t do that.

He couldn’t leave them behind.

It wasn’t difficult to put it all together. Lundquist had released the four men, for a reason Milton couldn’t yet discern, and then he had started to collect the people who knew the fugitives had been caught.

Mallory, Arthur, Ellie, and him.

Lester?

There was a chance that the others were dead already.

But he couldn’t leave without knowing.

And he had given them his word.

He would go back for them.

Milton’s word meant something to him.

He had made Lundquist a promise, too.

He would kill him and the others who had allied themselves with him.

Once he was satisfied that the fire was properly alight again, he collected the pistol he had taken from the body of the dead cop, and checked the magazine. Empty. He had hoped that he had been dreaming that part, the part where he used his last bullet to start a fire, but clearly not. Practically unarmed, then. All he had was the kitchen knife.

Fair enough.

He stepped around the thatched screen.

He paused for a moment and listened: nothing, save the rustle of the wind through the leaves at the foot of the ravine below him.

He looked up, noticing, with discomfort, that the thin column of smoke rising from the chimney was already visible. Never mind. He wouldn’t be staying here for very long. He looked at his surroundings with the benefit of daylight. The rise through the ravine was gentle up until this point, but it became steeper the further it climbed, several spots angling towards the vertical with the water splashing down in small falls and goat trails picking a path upwards. The trees and underbrush on either side thinned out a little, too, but larger trees remained all the way to the top of the ridge.

Milton reached for the overhang and hauled himself onto it, then climbed up another fifteen feet until he was near to the top of the ravine wall.

He crouched down, his eyes fixed to the south, the direction that the police would come from.

He estimated that he had covered two miles last night even though it had felt like more. He tried to put himself into the shoes of his pursuers. They would have discovered the dead man’s body, and that would have frightened them. They knew that he was armed, and that, too, would have given them cause for circumspection. If he had been in charge of the pursuit, with the benefit of that limited information, he would have set up a cordon as far along the south side of the forest as he could and then called for reinforcements.

The state police, perhaps.

He would have painted himself as a dangerous fugitive, a cop killer, and flooded the forest with as many men as he could find.

He would have waited until daybreak to start into the trees.

And now he would be coming.

Right now.

The way he saw it, he had two options.

He could run.

Or he could fight.

There was something to be said for running. He had enough of a head start that if he went now and moved as quickly as he could, he would stand a decent chance of getting clear. He expected that Lundquist would have divided the forest into grid squares and then set up a quarantine to contain him within the squares that he could realistically have reached last night. There would be police there already, but the longer he waited, the more there would be. If he went now, he was confident he would be able to break through the cordon and get away.

But Milton knew himself too well for that, and he had already discounted it. There was no point pretending that running was ever going to be an option.

Lundquist had killed the sheriff. The boys he was sheltering had killed a guard during a raid. They had very nearly killed him. They had beaten Ellie. They had taken Mallory and Arthur. There was no telling what they would do to them, and that was assuming that they were still alive. Milton couldn’t leave until he had either rescued them or taken revenge in their names.

No. Milton couldn’t run.

He looked out to the south, to the wide swathe of green and to the town just visible in the distance. Ellie, Mallory, and Arthur were out there.

Lundquist was out there, too, in the trees, raising a posse and coming after him.

No. He couldn’t run.

But he could fight.

Milton clambered carefully down the slope, loose scree skittering ahead of him, and slipped back behind the screen again. He dressed, his clothes still damp. He collected the first-aid kit and pushed it back into the bag. He broke the fire apart, kicking dirt and stones over it until the flames died, and then stepped back outside and started to climb.

He would head north and find somewhere to make a stand. He would take out his pursuers, one by one, and he would get the information that he needed.

What was happening in Truth?

Where were Ellie and the Stantons?

And then he would go and get them.

Chapter 30

THEY BROKE camp and left soon after the dogs had arrived. There was no sense in waiting any longer. Lundquist thought there was a decent prospect that they might be able to run Milton down by the end of the day, and he wanted to get started as soon as possible to put this whole sorry mess behind them.

The terrain sloped gently up, heading to the hills and modest mountains that provided a natural margin between the land and the shores of the Lake of the Clouds. It was still reasonably level down here, and Walker Price guided the dogs onto a path that Lundquist knew would be easily passable for the next mile. It was clear enough to jog, and he found that he was quickly covered in a sheen of sweat.

“You remember the last time we chased someone out here?” said Walker between breaths.

“Sure do.”

“Not that different to this, was it?”

“Same thing.”

That set him to thinking. It had been half a dozen years ago. The man, Lundquist remembered he was called Gus, he had a trailer in the park next to where the Stantons had parked their RV, and the word was that he was into little girls. When the Lattimers’ daughter didn’t come home from school one afternoon, Lester had gone around to Gus’s trailer to talk to him, hopefully to cross him off his list. He had driven off, followed pretty much the same route as Milton had, and had gotten into the woods before they could stop him. Lester had raised a posse, all of the deputies plus Walker and his dogs and another ten local men, and they had gone after him. They had tracked him six miles north to the lake. They had found his body slumped against the trunk of a tree, his shotgun in his mouth.

The little girl had come home two days later. Turned out that Gus had nothing to do with it. Lundquist hadn’t wasted too much time thinking about it. He had been running from something.

Guilty conscience.

That was good enough for him.

“How far do you think he’s managed to get?”

“Not far,” he said.

It couldn’t be far. Milton was wounded. He would have had to find somewhere to stop if only to treat the wound to his arm. How far would he have been able to travel? Say he kept going until midnight. That would have been a two-hour head start. Lundquist added another hour onto that to be charitable. Give him three. A man who didn’t know these woods would struggle to head in a consistent direction. There were ravines and draws you could go into that couldn’t be exited at the other end. There would be dead ends and double backs that would neutralise some of that advantage. He had no food and no drink, so that would slow him down. And then there was the gunshot wound. Lundquist figured that a healthy man with a knowledge of the paths and trails around here would have been able to move at two miles an hour. But Milton, with all those disadvantages, he would have struggled to keep half of that pace. If he was right, the maximum Milton would have been able to travel before he stopped for the night was two miles.

Two miles was nothing to Walker’s dogs. They had a great spoor from the clothes in the bag, and their noses were so sensitive that Milton would never be able to lose them. He could be ten miles away, but, for all the good that would do him, he might as well be just behind the next tree. The hounds were anxiously tugging the leash, yapping to each other in excitement, and if they were to be released, Lundquist didn’t doubt that they would sprint right to him like arrows to a target.

The path wound left and right and up and down, skirting the trunks of bigger trees and sending them through the middle of the underbrush. Lundquist was older than the others, but he made a point of keeping himself in shape, and his habit of taking a run first thing in the morning was starting to look pretty smart now. He settled into an easy stride, his waist angled down and forwards a little so that gravity could give him a friendly boost in the right direction. Even Michael and the other younger men were beginning to blow, but Lundquist knew he would be able to keep going for another half an hour without having to think about stopping to catch his breath. That brought a smile to his lips.

They reached a stream that ran through a small meadow. The leash went slack as the dogs stopped and started to circle, their noses to the ground.

“What are they doing?” Tom Chandler asked.

Walker reached down, unfastened Blue from the master leash, and handed her off to the younger man.

“They’ve lost the scent. You ask me, he went through the water to put them off.” He pointed to the other side. “Take Blue over there.”

“Aw, Lieutenant, do I have to?”

“Get over there,” he snapped.

Chandler did as he was told, splashing through the thigh-high water with the dog swimming determinedly beside him. They emerged on the other side, and Blue immediately put her nose to the ground, scuffled at the grass with her paws, and then started to bark.

“She’s picked it up again.”

The other dogs were agitated, keen to follow their sister over to the other bank, and Walker led them into the water. It was icy, the current was strong, and the footing on the bed was treacherous. Lundquist stepped carefully, submerged deep enough at one point that his balls were in the water, the cold taking his breath away, and then he was out. The dogs clambered after him, shaking their coats dry and then pulling urgently at the leash.

They set off again. The terrain started to climb, and they slowed their pace.

Lundquist jogged alongside Leland.

“This guy is serious, isn’t he?” the younger man asked.

“He’s military.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told Lester. British Special Forces.”

“Shit, Morten.”

“So what? There’s ten of us.”

Leland didn’t reply.

“You get anything else on him?”

“I ran the prints that Lester took when he had him in overnight.”

“And?”

“Got one hit. He was arrested in Texas three months ago.”

“For what?”

“Assault. Another bar brawl.”

Lundquist clucked his tongue against his teeth. “You’d think he’d learn his lesson.”

“Maybe not.”

“They get anything else on him?”

“File said that the feds came and claimed him the day after. This is where it gets real interesting, though. The sheriff down there, he wasn’t on duty when Milton was arrested. He came in the next day, heard the story about the FBI and why his deputy had let him out of his custody, thought he’d check it over, and called the local office down there. Turns out there was no record of Milton on any of their active cases. When he described the female agent who got him out, they said they didn’t have anyone there who even halfway fitted the description.”

Lundquist shook his head. “What are we dealing with here?”

“I’ll leave the thinking to you,” Leland replied. “It’s not what I’m good at.”

“Enough with the sass,” Lundquist said, but he was too intrigued to be irritated for more than a moment. “Maybe he works for the government?”

Leland jogged on, breathing heavily.

The government? Maybe he did. Wouldn’t that be something? Did it change anything? Only if they let him get out of the woods alive, and Lundquist did not intend to allow that. Perhaps there were complications involved here, but, at the end of all of it, they would just say that John Milton had killed Lester Grogan, Lars Olsen, George Pelham, and the agent. He had killed them, fired on the rest of them, and then run.

What else were they supposed to do? Let him go?

God had placed John Milton in Lundquist’s path. A final obstacle to clear. A final test before the glory of what He had instructed him to do.

The dogs pulled harder on the lead, and Walker’s arm was soon pulled straight, parallel with the ground. “Good dogs,” he called down to them. “Good dogs. You take us to him.”

Chapter 31

John Milton ran.

He stopped only to drink from the river and to eat. He saw an elderberry bush, and he stopped next to it, plucking off a handful of berries and stuffing them hungrily into his mouth. The juices were sweet and acidic, the tang making his mouth water. He hadn’t eaten properly since the venison two nights ago. That was going to have to be remedied sooner rather than later. He wouldn’t be able to run forever on an empty stomach.

He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his waist. He wanted to let some air get to the wounds on his arm. The pain was still there, and he had been reminded of it by the jolt that greeted every upward swing of his arm. He turned back and tried to assess how far he had travelled. Two miles in the last hour? The arm had compromised his stride. He was covering much less ground than he would have liked.

He set off again, pushing himself harder, gritting his teeth to ignore the pain. After another twenty minutes, though, the pain got worse. He couldn’t ignore it.

He stopped by the water’s edge, dunked his face, and then took off his jacket and sweater and examined his arm again.

The entry wound in his bicep, neat and circular, was healing. He had plucked out the worst of the debris. That wound would heal without the need for too much intervention, at least for the next few days.

He turned over his arm. His tricep was worse. Much worse. The flesh around the edges of the hole had become blackened and necrotic. It was dead, and unless he did something about it quickly, he would develop a fever, and that would stop him dead in his tracks. Worse, if left untreated, the wound would eventually become gangrenous, and he might lose the arm. He had to deal with it.

He smelled the deer before he saw it. The body was just a short distance from the path, slumped down in the brush with a large bite taken out of its hindquarters. A wolf, Milton thought. It reeked of rot and decay, and he had to fight the urge to gag. He covered his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and crouched down next to the body. He looked at the sticky, fibrous remains. A mess of white and brown maggots, each of them the size of half a fingernail, wriggled and seethed.

Maggots. Milton knew his battlefield medicine, and he knew his military history. It had worked for injured soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars. Maybe it would work for him. And, he knew, maggot therapy had gained credence recently. Doctors were using them again to clean the gangrenous feet of diabetics, saving them from amputation. The cleanliness in those circumstances couldn’t have been much more different than this, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He didn’t have much choice.

Milton plucked out a couple of them and held them in the palm of his hand. They looked like blowfly maggots. That would do. He reached back down to the carcass and picked out twenty of them, held them loosely in his fist and then rinsed them in the river, shaking them gently to clean them as best he could. They were far from sterile, but that was out of the question today. He’d risk the possibility of infection against the certainty that things would get worse if he let the wound continue to fester.

He winced at the thought of what he was about to do, chided himself for his squeamishness, and dropped the maggots into the wound. He fixed the dressing and wound the bandage around it again.

Chapter 32

Lundquist looked up into the sky and knew, with a local’s sure and certain knowledge, that the storm would be back again before the hour was out. The clouds were the deepest and angriest blacks, solid blocks of ink that gathered at the horizon and then rolled at them as though they were the outriders of a hurricane.

“Where is he?” he said in frustration, louder than he had intended.

“Can’t be far,” Michael said.

Lundquist ground his teeth. He had been saying that since they had started.

The dogs had stayed on his scent all morning. There had been no obvious attempt to lose them. His track led them along the banks of the little river, climbing ever upwards into the slopes that led to the larger hills and then, eventually, to the shallow peaks. There had been no more attempts to go through the water to lose the dogs. It was if he had stopped caring.

Yes, Lundquist had been surprised that Milton was still ahead of them. He was wounded, and they had moved quickly, barely stopping. The men had been running with their weapons ready for the last two hours, kept alert by Lundquist’s barked exhortations should their focus waver.

Milton had killed four men already.

Damned if he was going to kill any more.

They had been following the gentle upward slope, and Lundquist was feeling it in his legs and buttocks. Leland Mulligan had been blowing hard for the last hour, and Walker Price was damp with sweat. Michael was the fittest of them all, though. He had loped ahead of them, outpacing the dogs on occasion, diverting a few feet from the path in the event that Milton had left a more obvious sign that he had passed through.

The path dropped into a hollow that was bordered by slopes of loose shale. They followed a stream up the other side, the incline becoming steeper and steeper, the water sheltered by the steep shoulders of a ravine. The dogs pulled harder, and Lundquist recognised in their agitated behaviour that they were close.

“Weapons ready!”

Lundquist looked around. He knew the woods, and he remembered this spot. They called it the Whitefish Trail. The climb that faced them was steep, but there was a narrow path that cut upwards that could be accessed without too much difficulty.

He tightened his grip on his rifle.

Tom Chandler was up front. “Hey!” he cried out. Walker hauled the dogs back onto their haunches.

The dogs had led them to the face of the ravine on the right hand side. They had found an outcrop that reached out from the rock wall.

Lundquist hurried across. There was a thatched screen propped against the rock face. Chandler was on his haunches behind it, poking at the remains of a fire with a stick. Walker settled down next to him and looked.

“What do you think?” Lundquist said.

“Yes.” Walker nodded. “Look at that. He’s been here.”

Milton had dug a fire pit and lined it with rocks. The pit was full of ashes, and there were the unconsumed remains of a larger log that had been pushed away to die down. Walker disturbed the ashes all the way down to the bottom of the pit, but there was no sign of life at all. The fire had died out two or three hours ago, but that didn’t matter.

Milton had been here.

Lundquist stood, his knees complaining a little, and turned back to the others. They were gathered around the outcrop.

Lundquist was about to speak when there came a tremendous thunderclap. He looked up: the black clouds had sealed off the last square of blue sky and now rolled black and unending as far as he could see. The temperature had plunged, and then, just as he crammed his wide-brimmed hat onto his head, the rain started again.

“All right, men,” he called out, watching as they prepared their clothes for the change in the weather. “This is where he camped last night.”

“How’s he stayed so far ahead of us?” Michael called out.

“Pay attention!” Lundquist called out. “The dogs have a good scent. They’ve had a good one all morning. Maybe he stayed here for less time than we thought he did, maybe he’s just ahead of us. Maybe he isn’t as badly hurt as I think he is. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What I do know is we are going to find him, and, when we do, we’re going to make him wish he didn’t drag us out in this weather.”

“What are we doing now?”

“We stick with it. We keep going until we find him.”

Tom Chandler groaned.

“What?” Lundquist said. “You want to stay? You forget what he did back in the field before we came after him? Think it’d be a good idea to wait here on your own? Don’t be so stupid.”

Chandler looked away, chastised. Lundquist adjusted his hat, working the brim down, and nodded to Walker Price. The dogs leapt to follow the spoor again. Milton’s scent might as well have been painted on the path in fluorescent paint. He wasn’t far ahead, Lundquist knew it.

Chapter 33

He kept running.

A large ridge loomed up out of the trees, a sudden protrusion of sixty feet of bedrock granite that cut through the green with no obvious way around. Milton kept running towards it, pounding across the boggy trail. He heard the sound of the water from half a mile away, a shushing hiss that grew in strength the nearer he came to it. It became louder: a murmur, to a groan, to a roar. The trail cut through a stand of trees. Milton followed it, tracing a path around a gentle oxbow to the left and then to the right, and then he came to the waterfall.

He stopped and looked up.

He found himself in a little hollow, the river pooling in the bottom before draining away in the direction that he had come. It was verdant and fresh, with stands of ash and fir gathered on the shallow slopes. The ridge shot up ahead of him, more of a sheer cliff now that he was closer to it, blocking his way. The river rushed over the top. The falls consisted of two separate drops spaced about two hundred yards apart. The upper falls dropped about sixty feet; the lower about forty. The soft, layered, river rock was worn and sculpted, finished almost to resemble hand-rubbed pewter. It was formed into a number of channels, ledges, potholes, and other unique configurations. The river was funnelled between two sheer rocky lips and then was sent gushing out over the steep drops to crash against the rocks below.

There was no obvious way to go on.

Milton followed the river right up to the falls, treading carefully on the slippery, lichen-crusted stone. The ridge on either side of him was steep, too difficult to scale. He looked up. The falls offered a sheer drop into the plunge pool and the rocks that encircled it, mist and spray swirling around him.

He turned and looked due south, out over the slopes of the hills, high above the terraces of trees below, and tried to place himself in relation to where he expected his pursuers to be. They would have started to follow him by now. He guessed that he had a lead on them, but he couldn’t guess how long that lead would last. Not long, surely. He was injured. He didn’t know the terrain, and he didn’t have a map. They would have none of those disabilities.

Could he retrace his path and find another way around?

And then, just audible in the quiet of the morning, he heard barking.

They were tracking him with dogs.

Milton allowed himself a wry smile. He had expected it, but it was hardly fair.

Unless he was able to throw the dogs off, he knew that they would follow him relentlessly until they had him. He wondered what they were using to give them his spoor, and then he remembered his pack back in Lester Grogan’s office. He chided himself. He should have taken it with him when Lars Olsen had offered to drive him to the hospital. Apart from making it more difficult to track him, his pack had everything that he needed to stay out in the woods. Was he getting rusty? Should he have expected trouble? Leaving it behind had been negligent. In a situation like this, that could very easily be fatal.

The dogs barked again. They made up his mind.

He couldn’t turn back.

The hounds would have taken Lundquist north, following his trail. They had probably reached last night’s camp by now. They would keep coming. He only had a short lead on them now. How long could he stay ahead?

Not long.

And if he was going to make a stand, this wasn’t the time or the place.

He turned back to the waterfall again. He needed to put a barrier between him and them that would slow them down.

The dogs would lead Lundquist right up here, but that would be as far as they could go.

He would give Lundquist two choices: either leave the dogs and send his men up the cliff in pursuit or retrace his steps and find another way to ascend the ridge.

Milton had to climb.

He went right up to the rock and laid his hands out flat, feeling the moisture, the slickness, the damp air below him reaching all the way up to his head and beyond. He shrugged the bag from his shoulder. He wouldn’t be able to climb with it safely.

He considered his ascent. His left arm was sore and weak, and wouldn’t be much use. The rocks would be slippery and wet, too, and there were only a few decent handholds that he could identify from below. He would have to hope that he was strong enough to support himself, and that he would find enough suitable grips as he climbed up. It was a gamble. If he was too weak or if there was no suitable path, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to climb back down again.

And he might fall.

He took a deep breath, and bracing his hands on two suitable handholds just above him, he bore his weight. His left arm screamed with the effort, more than he was expecting, and the sudden pain dimmed his vision for a moment. He found a handhold above, and then another, and then another, slotting his feet into nooks and niches, jamming his toes onto narrow ledges.

Thunder boomed.

Ten feet.

Twenty feet.

His arm collapsed, and he lurched backwards, his feet cycling helplessly through the air. He shot out his right hand, and his fingers lashed around the roots of a sapling just up above, anchoring himself there until the pain cleared. He breathed in and out, sweat washing into his eyes, and gathered himself.

Thirty feet.

Halfway.

He tried to find another foothold. The toe of his right boot jarred against the face. He angled his foot and jammed it into a crack. Then, trusting that his foot would hold, he let go of the trunk and reached his right hand up. His fingers fastened around a spur of rock, and he heaved up again. The spur was wet and slick, but his fingers found their grip, and he collected his balance again.

Forty feet.

He looked down and saw the pool below him. It looked even farther down now from his lofty perch, but the jagged rocks looked bigger, hungry teeth ready to devour him, distorted by the spray and the hurried glance that was all he dared risk. He remembered the climbs he had undertaken during Selection, up and down more challenging rock faces than this one.

But, a contrary voice reminded him, you were younger then. You were in your twenties. It wasn’t raining like this. You weren’t injured. You had two good arms.

He reached up as far as he could with his left hand and found another grip. He jerked his head around to the right and looked up again, identifying what he hoped might be another suitable grip. He closed his eyes, trusted his judgment, opened his eyes, released his handhold, and pushed up. His right foot slipped off the rock and dropped down, and he fell. His right hand missed the grip. He had a split second to anticipate the pain as his left arm had to bear all of his weight, but knowing that it was coming was only a minor assistance, for the pain, the incredible depth of it, drowned him in a tide so complete that he was only barely aware of the yell of effort that was impossible to suppress. His consciousness dimmed again, but his fingers knotted around the rock and held firm, his left foot sliding down the wet rock until his ankle clashed against something raised and sharp. He swung from his left hand, his fingers beginning to slip, and scrabbled up again with his left boot, ignoring the pain in his shin and ankle until his toes were wedged in a cleft and his right hand had found a trailing vine.

Fifty feet.

Nearly.

He stopped there for ten seconds, pressed against the damp rock face, breathing in deeply, the pain lighting up his left arm and all the way down the side of his body. The water boomed angrily from the plunge pool below him, spray billowing up at him. He craned his neck to the right again and saw another handhold five feet across the face and, above that, a narrow shelf that would fit his boot perfectly. He didn’t allow himself the time to question his decision. He yanked hard on the vine and pushed off with his left foot, scrambling across the face before gravity clutched at him and tore him down, his right hand brushing against the grip and missing it, his boot crashing onto the shelf. He reached up again and found the handhold, his fingers fastening around the sharp rock so tight that he cut himself, pressing gratefully against the rock again.

He heard the dogs again, but they were louder now, much louder.

It sounded as if they were right below him.

The gunshot cracked out from the woods below, and the bullet winged off the rock a few inches below him.

He had misjudged the sound of the dogs. They had been much closer than he had guessed.

“Fire!” he heard Lundquist shout. “Bring him down!”

Another round cracked off the rock face, breaking off sharp little fragments of flint and drawing sparks.

He was helpless.

He blinked sweat out of his eyes and looked straight up.

It was easier from here. The face was pocked with small niches and nooks, and he found that he could ascend with just one arm, reaching up to secure himself before stretching out with his legs until his feet found the places to bear his weight. He quickened his ascent, salty sweat covering his face and dripping into his eyes and mouth. The water crashed and roared as if frustrated that he had managed to negotiate the climb.

Every second that passed was another that he expected to be shot.

Another round went just wide, slamming into the wall.

He hauled himself up the final five feet, found another foothold halfway up, and then clambered the rest of the way, pulling himself over the lip of rock and rolling clear. He was breathing heavily, and his arm was livid with pain. He closed his eyes, catching his breath for a moment, before he slid back to the lip and risked a half-second glimpse below.

Lundquist was down there, staring up at him. He saw Michael Callow, Thomas Chandler, and the other cop who had been at the Stanton RV. He saw another six men, counting them instinctively. Three dogs, rearing up on their hind legs, howled at him. Lundquist had his rifle raised, and he altered the aim quickly, loosing off a wild shot that flew high and wide and handsome. The other men raised their weapons and fired, but Milton was out of sight behind the lip of the cliff and safe.

“Cease firing!” Lundquist yelled.

The firing continued.

“Stop!”

The firing stopped, memorialised by the brief echoes that played out as the reports bounced back off the rock.

“Milton!”

He stayed where he was, on his back, taking deep gulps of air into his lungs.

“Milton!”

He rolled over onto his belly and shouted down, “I’m here.”

“You can’t run from me.”

“I’ve done all right so far.”

“You can’t keep running.”

“I’m not going to run, Lundquist. I told you what I was going to do. I’m going to kill all of you.”

“No,” he yelled back. “You’re not.” His voice was ragged with sudden anger and frustration. Milton was pleased to hear that. He could be manipulated.

“The man I killed in the field. You find his weapon?”

“George was an idiot. Never carried spare mags. Whatever was in the gun, that was it. You’ve already fired at least one round. How many you got left? Five? Six?”

“Climb up and find out. I’ll wait for you.”

He crawled backwards, away from the edge.

“You think that’s the only way up the ridge? We’ll loop around. The dogs have your scent, and we’ve quarantined the whole area. You’re trapped. You can’t run. Give up. Toss the gun and then come down after it.”

Milton pushed up to a crouch and then stood, the blood rushing from his head. He was dizzy for a moment, bobbing down again until the weakness had passed.

“Milton!”

He stood and started to jog to the north, following the slope as it climbed away from the plateau.

“Milton!”

He picked up speed. He kept on going.

“Milton!”

Lundquist’s voice was lost amidst the rush and roar of the water, baffled by the rise of the cliff, but even as he ran, Milton could still hear his anger.

Chapter 34

Special Agent Ellie Flowers slept for an hour at most. It was cold and uncomfortable in the shed, but it wasn’t the discomfort that kept her awake. It was the apprehension about what might happen to them when the sun came up.

She knew that dawn would be early. It was too dark to see her watch, so she waited impatiently for the hours to pass. Arty fell asleep in his sister’s lap, snoring lightly. Ellie talked to Mallory for a little while, both of them keeping their voices low so that they didn’t disturb him. There was something about their predicament that demanded the hush of a conspiratorial approach, too. It was as if Morris Finch or Magrethe Olsen or any of the others who were involved in the plot stood on the other side of the wall, eavesdropping on their conversation.

They spoke about what had happened to them and about what might happen next. Mallory suggested that they would be able to have a better look around the shed when it grew light. Perhaps they would find something that would enable them to cut through Ellie’s handcuffs. Then, she said, maybe the three of them would stand a chance of overpowering their captors and getting away.

Ellie wasn’t optimistic. Mallory was barely more than a girl, and her brother, although full grown, was too easily distracted to be relied upon. And she was still cuffed.

Their conversation had moved onto John Milton. Mallory said that she had heard Finch and Olsen talking, that Morten Lundquist was going to deal with him. On that score, Ellie had more confidence. Milton was tough and, even in the short time they had spent together she had seen that he was cunning and savvy. And he had killed two men. He was dangerous.

Would he leave them?

She didn’t think so.

But then, as they fell quiet and the hours drew on, she began to doubt herself. Even if he had been able to get away, where was he now? Why would he come back? What was there to stop him from getting to safety himself? He didn’t know them, not really. He didn’t know her. The night by the lake might just have been sex to him. He didn’t owe her anything.

Eventually she persuaded herself that their position was hopeless. Mallory must have been the same, too. Ellie knew that the girl was awake, lying quietly against the wall next to her, but she, like her, could no longer see the point in talking about something in which she invested no hope. There was no point in pretending otherwise: they were in a terrible, terrible position.

Eventually, Mallory slept. Ellie heard her breathing change. She dropped off herself soon after, but the sleep didn’t last.

Thin shafts of sunlight started to lance into the shed through tiny holes in the wall and the ceiling. Mallory had been resting against Ellie’s shoulder and she raised her head.

Ellie moved around so that she was sitting on her right leg, got her feet beneath her and pushed so that her back slid up the wall. Her muscles were tight and sore, kept in the same position for so long, and she stretched out to try to loosen them up. She looked up at the walls and ceiling. The light was coming in from loose joins between the planks that had been assembled to form the walls. The gaps could only have been a few fractions of an inch wide at most, but when the light that they admitted was aggregated, there was a dim illumination that was enough for her to explore the space. She edged away from the wall.

The shed was twenty paces in length and ten paces in width. There was a large lawnmower parked up against the wall in the middle of the space and, next to it, a plough that was still caked in dried mud. There were several barrels and boxes, the light too dark to make out the stencilled words that might have identified their contents. There was a strong smell emanating from them, ammonia perhaps. Fertiliser? They were on a farm, after all. She looked for tools, something that they could use to work at her cuffs or the lock on the door, but there was nothing. She walked to the wide door that they had arrived through and pushed at it with her shoulder. There was a little give in the lock, but she could feel the door butting up against something outside. She had seen the brackets out there when they had thrown them inside and guessed that the door had been locked and barred. It felt secure. She turned to look for another door, but there was none. She looked up to the ceiling for a trapdoor and saw nothing. There was nothing in the floor that might suggest a cellar.

She sighed in frustration. It wasn’t surprising. They had taken off the cuffs on Mallory and her brother. They were hardly likely to do that if there was an easy way out of the shed. There was nothing else to do but to face facts: they were stuck.

“Anything?” Mallory called out softly.

“Not that I can see.”

“Look at these.”

Mallory had found a box of pamphlets and poorly printed newsletters. The light had strengthened enough to read the titles: The Plot Against Christianity, The Thirteenth Tribe, You Gentiles, White Power, The Talmud, The New Jewish Encyclopaedia, The Christian Patriot Crusader, The Klansman, Aryan Nations’ Newsletter, the Christian Vanguard Newsletter.

“What is this all about?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said, although she was starting to get a pretty good idea.

It was almost too late by the time she heard the noise from outside. There came the rattle of a metal bar being drawn through the brackets and then the click of the lock. Mallory stuffed the leaflets back into the box, and they hurried back to the wall and dropped to the floor beside Arthur.

The door swung open, and light swamped the darkness.

Ellie blinked furiously, trying to adjust to the sudden glare.

Morris Finch was silhouetted in the doorway. He was holding a shotgun.

“Morning,” he said. Was he aware of how foolish his good manners sounded? “Did you manage to get some sleep?”

Ellie stood again. “You want to think very carefully about what you’re doing. I’m a federal agent. You know the penalty for the murder of a federal law enforcement officer is death, don’t you?”

“No one’s talking about murder,” he said uncomfortably.

“No, but we are talking about kidnapping, right?”

“You just need to help us out.”

“Let us out. Let me have your van. I’ll see to it that you’re treated leniently.”

“Can’t do that. Too much has happened for that.”

“What then? It is murder, then?”

“No…”

“What else is there if you won’t let us out?”

“It’s not my decision to make.”

“Who, then?”

“The colonel,” he said, looking away. “He’s in charge.”

“Who?”

“Lundquist.”

“What do you mean, the colonel?”

Finch shrugged uncomfortably. The man’s eyes were dead, his pale face expressionless. Ellie stared at him and he stared back.

She tried again. “What do you mean?”

“He’s in charge.”

“Of what?”

Finch didn’t answer.

“Where is he?”

“In the woods.”

“Why?”

“Your friend, the Englishman, he’s out looking for him.”

Ellie felt a buzz of hope. “What happened?”

Finch took a step into the barn. He was morbidly obese, an enormous gold and silver belt buckle holding up jeans big as spinnaker sails. His doughy face became visible from out of the shadows. “He got away last night,” he said, his voice a whisper. “The colonel and the other men have gone to track him down.”

“You have to let us out, Mr. Finch.”

“How do you know my name?” he said, and then, looking at Mallory, he added, “She told you.”

He was a little simple, Ellie saw. She noted that for future reference.

“Milton will go and get help. If you haven’t freed us by the time the FBI gets here, there won’t be anything I can do to help you. You’ll be treated just like the others. Kidnapping of a federal officer, at minimum. You know how long they’ll lock you up for that?”

Finch seemed not to hear her. “Morten tricked him. He said they were in a car crash. He was going to be driven out of town and shot, but it didn’t go down like that. He worked it out, somehow, and he got away.”

“I know they tricked him. I was in the office when they left.” Ellie looked at Finch and saw the faraway look on his face. “Are you listening to me, Mr. Finch?”

He wasn’t listening. “There’s something you need to know. The officer who took Milton out there was Lars Olsen.”

“So?”

“You met his mother last night. Magrethe. Her and his father, Seth, they live out here.”

“And?”

“Milton killed Lars. There was a wreck up on the road out of town. They had to cut Lars out of it. He’s dead. Magrethe was all for coming in here and shooting all of you. She would have done it, too, except I managed to persuade her that it wasn’t a good idea. But I don’t know how long I can keep that up. What I’m saying is, you have to do what we want you to do. If you don’t, there won’t be anything I can do to help you. We have work to do, God’s work, and I won’t let anything stop that from being done, but I’d rather you didn’t have to die for it.”

“You can let us out,” Ellie repeated, but then they heard the sound of footsteps approaching the barn, and Finch looked at her with urgent eyes, imploring her to be quiet.

Magrethe Olsen arrived before she could press him any further. She was carrying another shotgun in the crook of her left arm, and she had a fierce expression on her face. She stepped inside, reached out for a light switch and slapped her hand against it. There were two naked bulbs suspended from the ceiling high above, and they flickered on. She shut the door and turned back to them.

“The man you were with in the woods. John Milton. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said.

“It’d be better if you played ball,” Finch warned them, his newly assertive tone more for Magrethe’s benefit than for theirs.

Mallory stepped forwards. “Why do you want to know?”

“Tell me.”

The girl had a gloating tone to her voice. “Giving you trouble, is he?”

Finch frowned at her. Ellie turned and gave the tiniest shake of her head. She could see from Finch’s discomfort and Magrethe’s anger that it was true, Milton was still out there, and for the first time in hours, she felt a flicker of optimism that maybe they were not completely lost.

Mallory didn’t take the hint. “He’ll give you more trouble by the time he’s through.”

Magrethe slapped Mallory across the face with the back of her right hand.

“Hey!” Arthur started to his feet, but Magrethe turned the shotgun towards him, and Mallory, panicked, reached for his sleeve and yanked him back behind her.

“We don’t know who he is,” Ellie said, trying to get the woman to turn her attention back onto her again.

Magrethe swung the shotgun around and aimed it straight at her chest. “You want to know what your friend Mr. Milton did last night? He killed my son. So you want to think very carefully, give it a lot of thought, how much lip you want to be giving me. I guess you found out plenty about him when you were out in the woods going after the boys. So you better tell me, right now, exactly who he is. What is he doing here?”

Ellie looked at the gun pointed right at her, and swallowed. Finch’s warning had not been gratuitous. There was an iron resolve behind the grimace of wrath that animated the woman’s face. She would shoot her. Ellie had seen that look before. It wasn’t a bluff. She had to give her something.

“He’s an outdoorsman. He said he’s been trekking through the countryside.”

“He’s more than that. He killed Lars, and then he got clean away into the woods.”

“He said he was a soldier.”

“Special Forces,” Mallory added gleefully.

“Shut up, Mallory,” Ellie said.

Magrethe jabbed forwards with the shotgun. “And?”

“She’s right. British Special Forces. He didn’t tell us anything else. He’s quiet.”

“You must have more than that.”

“No, that’s it. He’s private. Believe me, I was interested in knowing more about him after I saw how he brought in Callow and the others, but he wasn’t much into talking about himself.”

Magrethe frowned. “What you think, Morris?”

“I think she’s telling the truth,” he said, a little too quickly.

“And I think you’re getting soft in your old age, soft as shit. You want to remember what’s at stake here. This little bitch, she knows enough to put us all away for the rest of our lives. Shit, they all know enough. We’ve got God’s work to do, and, I don’t know, I been thinking about it overnight, and I’m not sure if I can think of one good reason why I don’t put bird shot in them right now and feed them to the pigs. You think of a reason why we better not do that?”

Ellie felt an emptiness in her gut. Again, she doubted it was a bluff.

Finch shuffled uncomfortably. “We don’t want to do that yet, do we? We got their friend running around in the woods, the Lord knows where he is, but it might be that we need them if he keeps causing trouble. What you’d call leverage. We shoot them now, and we don’t have any cards to play. If the colonel wanted them dead, he would’ve said, right?”

The woman’s frowned deepened into an irascible scowl, but he had persuaded her. She took a step back, to the door. “You get to live a little longer, but I’m telling you, if I hear so much as a mouse’s fart from in here, I’m going to come back and shoot all of you. I’ll be honest with you: I was going to do it this morning. Maybe I still will. You don’t want to push your luck.” She stepped back outside. “Morris, get your fat ass out here.”

The man looked into Ellie’s face, his expression eloquent with warning, and then he left the barn, too. Magrethe shut and locked the door, and then they heard the sound of the metal bar as it was slid into its brackets, sealing them inside.

“Don’t provoke them.”

“I wasn’t,” Mallory said.

“You were. If you push it too far, they’ll shoot us.”

Mallory didn’t reply.

“I’m serious.”

“What’s happening?” Arty asked plaintively.

“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “Did they say anything to you when you were at the mine with them?”

“They talked about God a lot.”

“What about him?”

“They read out of the Bible at nights.”

“Can you remember what they said?”

“Some of it,” he said, his face brightening. “I got a good memory, everyone says so.”

“Tell us.”

“‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.’”

“Anything else?”

“‘These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.’”

Arthur was ready to go on when they all heard the low rumble of a big, powerful engine.

Mallory hurried across to the wall that faced in the direction that the noise was coming from.

“What are they doing?” Ellie said.

“The truck. Come and look.”

Arty helped Ellie to her feet, and they went across to the gap in the wall that Mallory was looking through. She put her eye to the wall and looked out into the yard.

The big Freightliner had been driven into the space between the two barns. There was a trailer, a forty-foot unit, with four men working around the back of it. A collection of large metal drums and barrels had been delivered to the yard on a tractor trailer. The Freightliner’s loading panel had been lowered, and the men were heaving the drums from the trailer into the semi. The drums were the same as the ones that she had seen in the barn.

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said.

She didn’t know, not for sure, but she had an idea.

“What’s in those barrels?”

“Can’t tell.”

She walked across to the barrels that she had seen earlier. Now that the light was better, she could make out the words.

“What is it?”

“Fuel.”

“Why are they loading it into the back of the truck?”

She didn’t say, but she could guess. The Oklahoma City atrocity had been part of the syllabus she had studied at the academy in Quantico. She remembered reading the testimony from the trial of the bombers, and in particular, she remembered how they had constructed their massive truck bomb.

They had used a Ryder rental truck, a sixteen-foot City Van with a six thousand-pound capacity. The explosion that they had triggered was so big that it had turned a city block into a war zone.

The Freightliner outside was forty feet long. Nearly three times bigger. What was the capacity? Five times more? Ten times?

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ellie said.

Chapter 35

Milton ran for another five hours, hardly stopping. He didn’t know how long it would take Lundquist to find another way up the ridge. He hadn’t seen an obvious path before he had made the climb. He worked on the assumption that the ascent and his bluff from the top had bought him another hour or, if he was lucky, another two. Lundquist would find his way up eventually, and those dogs would pick up his spoor again.

But that was all right.

He wanted them to.

He wanted Lundquist to follow him.

His path bisected the old railroad tracks that they had followed on the first journey to the mine. It was only the day before yesterday, but it already seemed like much longer ago. He passed the Little Carp River and the wreck of the Model A, and then after pounding uphill for another hour, he made the top of the rise and looked down at the Lake of the Clouds. It lived up to its name this time. The cloud bank was low, a carpet of greys and blacks that provided a ceiling just a few thousand feet over his head. Patches of mist and wispy cloud were lower still, almost on the water itself, and rain lashed into him. Visibility was limited.

That was all right, too.

If he could have had his way, it would have been even more limited.

They thought they were hunting him, but they were wrong.

He started down the slope.

The encampment did not look as if it had been disturbed in the time that he had been away. The remains of the fire were undisturbed, cold ash that had been rendered into muddy sludge by the rain. The doors to the huts were still shut tight, and when Milton opened them, the insides were just as he remembered them. Nothing had been moved in the two days since he had been here.

The inside of the store shed was gloomy, and he squinted into the murkiness as he assessed the contents. He remembered seeing a green first aid box and it was still there. He opened it: there were fresh dressings, bandages and, best of all, two bottles of pills and a tube of ointment. The first bottle was labelled Amoxi-Boll. It was amoxicillin trihydrate, a broad-spectrum antibiotic that he knew would help with his arm. The other bottle contained ibuprofen. The tube was labelled Bactroban. It contained mupirocin, an antibacterial ointment.

There was a cardboard tray of mineral water, the bottles still sheathed inside their plastic covering. Milton stripped it away, opened a bottle and drank down a handful of the amoxicillin and the painkillers, then finished the water.

He stripped to his waist and, moving carefully so as not to tip out the maggots, he peeled off the dressing. The maggots wriggled inside the wound, always moving. It was difficult to say how much good they had done but, as he looked at it, he thought that there was less of the blackened, decaying flesh. He tipped the insects into his hand, washed out the wound with another bottle of water, and then applied the mupirocin cream. When he was done, he tipped the maggots back in and covered them with a fresh dressing, binding it tight with adhesive tape.

He looked around again.

One wooden crate caught his attention. He heaved it away from the wall. Stencilled letters on the side read CORPS OF ENGINEERS — US ARMY. He knelt down and used the kitchen knife to loosen the tacks that fixed the lid to the frame. He worked two of them out, slipped his fingers into the gap and yanked back, splintering the pine and tearing the lid off.

Sticks of dynamite sat inside, packed neatly. Twenty sticks, forty percent nitro. He guessed that Callow and the others had stolen the explosives for their bank jobs, just in case they needed to blow a vault door to get at their spoils. It was good fortune that it was all still here. Still dry, too, still ready to be used.

Maybe his luck was changing.

There was a box of safety fuses slipped inside the crate. Each fuse ended with a nonelectrical blasting cap. He emptied them out onto the floor and attached one to each stick. He guessed each fuse would burn at the standard rate of a foot every thirty seconds. Plenty of time for what he needed.

He took eight of the sticks and shoved them into his pockets, four in each.

Now, he was going to need a fire.

There was plenty of tinder in the shed: old newsprint and the brown paper that had been packed with the dynamite. The crate that had stored the dynamite would be easy to break into kindling. There was plenty for what he had in mind.

The compound bow was still hanging from the nail on the wall. He took it down and inspected it. It was an expensive piece of kit, at least a thousand dollars. It used a levering system comprised of cables and pulleys to bend the limbs and tighten the bowstring. The bowstring was applied to cams, each of which had cables attached to the opposite limb. He drew back the string, causing the cams to turn. The set-up required less force to bend the limbs and tighten the string than a recurve bow or a longbow.

Considering the state of his arm, that was fortunate.

He stood the bow on the floor. There was a quiver with eight arrows inside. He took that, too.

Now, he needed to eat.

How long did he have?

Not long. He would have to be quick.

The remains of the deer were out of the question. It had decayed badly, and it was infested with maggots. He looked at the shelves and found packets of trail mix, fruit roll-ups, a box of energy bars, crisp breads and tins of beans. He needed calories, so he ate everything he could find, opening the cans with his utility knife and using it to spoon the beans into his mouth. He washed it all down with another bottle of water.

He felt a little better. The painkillers had numbed the pain from his arm, and his belly was full.

Better.

He was ready.

He gathered the things that he needed and hurried across the camp to the adit that led into the darkened maw of the mine. As he reached the steps, he fancied he heard the sound of a dog barking.

He hurried inside.

Chapter 36

The dogs yelled and yammered and dragged Walker Price down the slope. Lundquist and the other six men followed behind them. He felt his pulse racing until he could feel his heart slamming in his chest. Milton was here. The dogs knew it.

He knew it.

“Eyes open,” he called out. “This is one slippery bastard.”

He had decided that it was too dangerous to try to climb the falls. There was no way of knowing if Milton was still up there, waiting at the top with George Pelham’s gun. He couldn’t have many rounds left to fire, but he wouldn’t need many. As soon as a man popped over that lip, he was liable to have the top of his head shot off. Lundquist wasn’t prepared to take the risk.

He had split the party. He had ordered Randy Watts and Archie McClennan to stay back and guard the falls in case Milton decided to wait for them to leave and then tried to climb down again and slip behind them. Randy and Archie were good men, solid and reliable, and Lundquist had sent them back into the tree line so that they wouldn’t be visible from the top. If Milton did try to descend, they would shoot him.

He had led the other seven men as they had retraced their steps. Walker Price knew the terrain, and he had directed them east, following the line of the ridge for a mile until they reached a draw that cut up through the ridge all the way to the plateau on the top. It was still steep, and Lundquist was sweating at the end of it, but at least they were up. The diversion had taken them ninety minutes. Lundquist was frustrated, but it had been necessary. Price had assured him that there was nothing else like the falls between here and the lake, no other feature of the landscape that Milton could use against them. They doubled back to the falls, but the dogs caught the scent before they got there, dragging them back up to the north.

To the old mine.

Lundquist knew that was Milton’s final destination.

It had to be.

“Michael,” he called out.

His boy jogged across to him.

“Yes, sir?”

“The mine. What did you boys have up there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Guns.”

“Shotguns. Milton used one to cover us on the way back.”

“Does he know that the others are there?”

“Found them all.”

“So he’ll have one?”

“Won’t be able to use them.” He grinned. “He disabled them. Took the barrels off.”

“Anything else? You have a rifle? A handgun?”

“No.”

“Nothing with longer range?”

“Didn’t need anything like that.”

“Ammo?”

“Just shotgun shells.”

All right, he thought. Assume that all he has is a handgun and a limited number of rounds.

There were eight of them. They were all armed. Lundquist had a rifle. Michael had a rifle, too, and the army had trained him to be an excellent shot. He’d had plenty of practice, out there in the sandpit, and he had been given a medal for one shot in Iraq, plugging a raghead from a thousand yards. They would stay behind in the tree line and cover the others going in. It would be a turkey shoot. The men would flush Milton out of cover, and him and his boy would pick him off at range.

The trail led them down and around, and then the trees thinned out, and he saw the lake and the old mine buildings laid out before him. The old place hadn’t changed in forty years. He looked out at the lake, the wind curling the surface into spume-topped breakers and the rain hammering into it. There were the two huts backed up against the tall shoulder of bedrock that hemmed in the lake on its western border, one of them overwhelmed by the water. The buildings were almost hidden by the trees and underbrush around them, a smothering blanket of vegetation. He saw the fire pit that the boys had been using.

“Stop,” he called out.

The men did as they were told. The dogs yipped and growled, frustrated to be held back so close to their quarry. Lundquist gestured that the men should gather round.

“You sure he’s down there?” he asked Price.

The man nodded down at his dogs. “They are. Look at ’em. That’s good enough for me.”

“If he is,” Lundquist said to the others, “this is the end of the road for him. He’s got the cliff to the west and the water at his back. There’s nowhere else for him to go.”

“What are we going to do, sir?”

“Me and Michael will stay up here with the rifles. The rest of you, you go down into the camp and find him. Search the huts, the trees at the back, all the way down to the water. He’s in there somewhere.”

“With a gun.”

“A handgun, with maybe a couple of rounds. He pops up, I promise you he’ll get shot. I can shoot, and Michael was a sniper in the army.”

“That don’t fill me with confidence,” Larry Maddocks said, “the mess he’s made of things already, dragging us all the way out here in weather like this.”

Michael faced up to Larry and took a step closer to him. Lundquist put a hand on his shoulder. “Enough, Larry. And calm down, Michael. You know what Milton can do. You think we stand a better chance if we start bickering among ourselves?”

“Yes,” Larry said. “I do know. That’s why I’d be much happier if it was me staying up here and you and him going down there.”

“That’s the way we’re going to do it. You got a problem with it, Private?”

Larry sighed in frustration. “No, sir.”

“Where are your bikes?” Lundquist asked.

“Around back,” Tom Chandler answered. “There’s a grove. We put them in there.”

“Does Milton know where they are?”

“Probably. He had a good look around.”

“Well, you need to keep that in mind. He might run.”

Michael took his rifle. It was a lever-action Winchester Model 94, and he already had a cartridge in the chamber. “If he gives me a clear shot, I guarantee you, I will hit him.”

Milton saw them come down the slope. There were six of them. The man with the dogs was in the lead, his animals pulling hard at their leash. Tom Chandler was behind him, a shotgun aimed out ahead, and behind him came another four men. Milton had counted ten of them when he had looked down from the top of the falls. Lundquist must have left some of them back there in case he tried to double back. How many, though? Two? Three? Four? And where was he? Had he given himself that duty, the safer option? Lundquist hadn’t struck Milton as craven, but maybe he was more bark than bite. In Milton’s experience, it happened that way sometimes. You never could really tell until the chips were down and the bullets started to fly.

Didn’t matter.

Milton would find him wherever he was.

The lead man slowed at the fringe of the tree line, pulling back to halt the dogs.

Deep breaths. Milton picked up the bow and held it in his left hand. He stood at a right angle to the target, his feet shoulder-width apart with his back foot slightly forward. He slipped an arrow into the rest, pushing it back until the nock clicked into the bowstring. He straightened his bow arm, raising it until it was parallel with the ground, and, using his upper back, drew the bowstring straight back. The effort of holding his left arm stiff sent a shudder of pain across his numbed muscles, and the bow jerked off to the right. He gritted his teeth, tried to ignore the pain, corrected the aim, and pushed his arm out to the target.

They were still in cover, just among the trees. Milton watched as another man came into view, just for a moment. The man had a rifle. Visibility through the rain was dreadful, but Milton recognised the bulky frame.

Lundquist.

He disappeared again.

The dogs barked excitedly.

The man with the lead started forwards, the hounds drawing him down the slope at an easy jog. The five other men followed.

Shotguns.

Pistols.

Milton held the bowstring up against his cheek and nose and aligned the sight with his target.

He opened his hand, and the arrow raced free.

Lundquist lay flat on the slope, the rifle laid out ahead of him so that he could sight down the barrel. Michael was alongside him in a similar position. He thought he had imagined the flash of movement. It was so fast and so stunningly quiet that he didn’t register what it was until Walker Price tottered backwards, his hands clutching the long shaft that had suddenly appeared in his chest. He released the leash, and the dogs sprang away, then stopped, confused. Price weaved around until he was facing back up the slope. Lundquist saw the fletching on the shaft and realised, with horror, that it was an arrow.

Michael had seen it too. “Oh shit,” he gasped. “Oh shit.”

“What, Michael?”

“I forgot that.”

“You forgot what?”

“My bow. He’s found my bow.”

“You had a bow down there?”

“Sure. We were hunting.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a bow!”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what? You didn’t think. You never think.”

Walker collapsed onto his knees, and his dogs scattered, howling.

The other five men were halfway between the safety of the tree line and the shacks that made up the camp. Walker had been in the lead, so they had all seen what had just happened to him. They were a little closer to the camp. They should have made for shelter there, but they all assumed that Milton was in that vicinity, and their instinct was to go back in the direction from which they arrived. At least they knew that there was safety there.

Lundquist knew that was wrong.

“No!” he screamed. “Keep going! Get into the camp!”

Larry Maddocks broke first. He turned, but as he tried to push off, his foot skidded through a sheet of mud, and his leg flew out from beneath him. He splashed into the mud, face first, and, as he pushed himself up and scrambled on hands and knees, a second arrow streaked through the air. His slip saved his life. The arrow missed him by fractions, flying into the trees.

Someone shouted out a strangled, “Fuck!”

Maddocks ran for cover.

Thomas Chandler, Leland Mulligan, Dylan Fox, and Harley Ward were in the open.

“Get into the camp!” Lundquist yelled as loud as he could.

Michael stared down the sight of his rifle, sweeping it left and right. “You see him?”

“Get into the camp!” he screamed at the men. “He can see you there!”

Tom Chandler turned first and headed the other way, going for the shacks. The other three followed.

Lundquist stared into the slanting rain and saw a quick flash of movement.

“There!” he said. “In the mine.”

They both fired, again and again. Lundquist held his Ruger .223 steady, pulling back the bolt handle in his open hand, the jacket ejecting past his right ear, pulling the trigger, repeating, the rifle always held against his shoulder. He fired until he was dry.

“Did you get him?” he yelled out as he fished in his pocket for another magazine.

Michael was more selective, pulling and firing until the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. “I don’t know,” he said, using a stripper clip to reload the magazine.

Lundquist’s hands were shaking. “Keep him penned in. The others can flank him.”

Milton pressed himself against the rock wall. The barrage from Lundquist and Callow peppered the walls and ceiling of the adit, but he had moved out of sight, and now he could just wait for them to run dry. At least one of them was firing wildly, indiscriminately, and he was happy to see them waste their ammunition. He was badly outmatched in that department — he only had another four arrows clipped into their slots on the bow, plus two “specials”—and if their hysteria brought them nearer to parity, then that was to be welcomed.

But the firing stopped.

That second arrow had only missed by two feet, but it had missed. A moving target, at medium range, in these conditions, with a bow and arrow? It would have been a difficult shot to make if he had been healthy. The pain in his arm was affecting him badly, even with the ibuprofen, and it had been all he could do to ignore it and hold his arm straight enough to fire. But he had missed, and that meant at least nine of them were still alive: Lundquist, Callow, the five survivors who had come out of the trees and the two men who must have waited for him at the falls.

The noise of the rain was all he could hear. He glanced back down into the corridor. The tiny fire that he had set was burning, the smoke sucked down towards a vent in the wall at the end.

Milton had seen Chandler, the young cop, and the two other men sprint ahead, to the camp.

He had expected them to do that.

He had hoped that they would do that.

Lundquist would try to pen him here and send his men to flank him. If Milton allowed that, he would be at their mercy. There was no way out.

He didn’t plan on allowing it.

He had another arrow notched and ready to fire. Running to the cover of the shacks had bought them just a few extra moments to live. He would have picked them off otherwise.

A temporary reprieve.

The two shacks were fifty feet away from him.

There was a natural shelf in the corridor at the same height as his head. It was sheltered and dry. He unnotched the arrow that he had readied, reached across and took the first of the two modified arrows that he had left there. He had used medical tape to fasten a stick of dynamite to the shaft between the fletching and the arrowhead. He had balanced it as well as he could, but it was ungainly, and it would fly with poor accuracy, but that was acceptable.

He didn’t need it to be accurate.

Thunder boomed outside the entrance to the mine. The clouds were down low, right overhead, and the clap was louder than Milton could remember.

Rain cascaded down, the run-off pouring down from the rocks above the adit, screening him.

He reached down with the arrow and held the short fuse in the flames until it hissed and popped and fizzed.

He quickly notched it, drew the drawstring back, aimed it, and let it go.

The arrow arced out of the entrance, a graceful parabola, reaching up and then curving back down as gravity clutched it.

The rifle fire started up again. He pivoted back into cover.

Lundquist fired and worked the bolt, fired and worked the bolt, but before he could run dry again, he saw a third arrow launch out of the darkened entrance and slide through the rain, apparently aimless.

But it wasn’t aimless.

It landed on the roof of the first shack, the arrowhead piecing the rotten old shingles, the shaft quivering. Lundquist stared at it. Something was wrong. He saw the tiny pinprick of light alongside the fletching, swaying back and forth as the arrow oscillated.

Oh no.

A second arrow was loosed from the mine, landing between the boards of the wall of the other shack.

That one, too, looked strange.

“Run!”

The first stick of dynamite exploded with a massive boom, a sudden cloud of dark grey smoke and debris billowing out. The shack was blown apart, the planks and shingles and the wooden frame torn into a million fragments and scattered for a hundred feet in all directions.

Lundquist pressed his arms over his head and pushed his face down, his mouth and nostrils in the wet muck.

The next stick detonated. This shack was closer to their firing position, and the shards of broken wood pattered around them, larger fragments caught in the branches of the trees overhead.

Lundquist looked up. Harley Ward and Dylan Fox had been right behind the first shack, and there was no sign of them anymore.

Tom Chandler had seen what had happened and had sprinted away from the second shack just before it, too, was destroyed. The blast must have picked him up and helped him on his way, for he had been flipped around and thrown down to the water’s edge. He was rolling onto his belly, slapping the sense back into his head.

Lundquist could smell gunpowder, heavy and acrid, hanging in the wet air.

There was a crashing through the undergrowth, and Lundquist swung the rifle around, his finger ready to pull back on the trigger. Leland Mulligan appeared from out of nowhere, his clothes and hair scorched from the explosion, and fell down beside Larry Maddocks.

“What the fuck!” Leland gasped, the words gushing out and fear obvious in his wide eyes.

Michael had saucer eyes, too. “Pops?” he asked. “What do we do?”

He pressed himself to his hands and knees, mud dripping from his face. He held onto his rifle with shaking hands.

“Run,” he yelled. “Run!”

Chapter 37

Milton came out of the dark entrance to the adit.

They had fled. He had watched them scramble back up the slope, heading for the ridge and the long run back to the south and the relative safety of the town.

Milton grimaced.

What had they been thinking? That this was going to be a simple manhunt? Chasing a one-armed man up here until he ran out of places to hide, put a bullet in him, and be done with it all? Lundquist had probably expected that this would be easy.

More fool him.

Other people had made that mistake before.

It was a mistake you only made once.

Lundquist would know that he had changed tactics. He wasn’t running any more. He had lured them up to the mine and trapped them. They had been fortunate. Three of them had been killed. More of them should have been dead. Lundquist knew a little more of what Milton was capable, and what he was prepared to do. He would know, too, that he was coming for them. That would make things more difficult. There would be no more complacency.

Now he was going to go after them and hunt them down.

The man with the dogs had dropped his shotgun, but it had fallen in the open, and Milton dared not risk trying to retrieve it. They might have doubled back, ready to pick him off. The two men behind the first shack had been carrying weapons, too, but the explosion had thrown them so far away that he might be looking for hours before he found them. He would have to rely on the bow.

He stayed off the path, climbing the slope in the cover of the trees and brush. It slowed him down, but he couldn’t risk a more direct approach. They still had their rifles and, if he got close, their shotguns and pistols. There was a swathe of long grass between the trees and the lake, but he dared not stray into it for fear that he would leave a path that Lundquist would be able to see from farther up the slope. The trees grew sparser as he started to reach the top of the slope. He moved more carefully, lying flat in the mud, propelling himself farther by digging his toes into the muck and pushing.

The rain became a deluge. Larry Maddocks scrambled up the slope to the ridge, slipping and sliding through the slop and the mud, driven ever onward by the thought that Milton might be coming after them.

What had just happened?

Oh man. He was scared. Was he ever scared.

Maybe the colonel would decide that the time was right to put a lid on things, at least for a while until things calmed right back down again. Maybe now wasn’t the right time for what they had been planning. Maybe God's word could wait. Too much heat. Getting out of this in one piece was a sign. Larry was a devout man, like they all were, and he knew an omen when he saw one. There was no point in pushing things further than they were ever meant to be pushed. God had given them a message.

You need to be waiting.

He decided, right there, that he would bring it up with Lundquist the next chance he had.

They crashed and clattered through the trees. Larry gasped with the effort, hardly daring to look back, and then his leg snagged on an outstretched root and he fell into the mud.

The impact jarred the rifle out of his hands.

When he got up, he couldn’t see it.

He couldn’t see the others.

Shit, shit, shit.

Where were they?

He looked up into the sky, the midnight black, and saw a seam of lightning as it spread out for miles on either side.

He didn’t want to call out, but he didn’t want to stay silent, either, and have them carry on without him.

“Hey?” he called tremulously. Then, louder, “Hey?”

Dammit!

He looked down at the long grasses and underbrush, scouring it for his gun. He needed his gun. He couldn’t just leave it here.

He didn’t see Milton until it was too late. He came out of the darkness that had gathered beneath the canopy of branches, the light all gone, blanketed by the gloom from the storm. He had been hiding in the underbrush, and as he loomed up and took a quick step towards him, Larry noticed that his face and throat had been smothered with thick black mud. His whole head was daubed with it, just his pale blue eyes visible as he punched the serrated kitchen knife he carried in his right fist into Larry’s chest. He bent double, right over the knife, feeling the metal inside him as it probed and pressed in between the long slither of his intestines. The man pulled the knife out, and Larry felt his blood follow after it, a gush that splashed out onto the grass, red droplets that diluted and dispersed in the rain.

He felt light-headed, only vaguely aware as strong hands took fistfuls of his jacket and hauled him off the path. He was dumped in the undergrowth, face up, and he was still awake when he saw those cruel blue eyes again and then the knife, sheathed in his blood, the jagged edge descending to his throat and swiping across and up.

“Larry?”

Lundquist cursed him again. The man was a liability, always had been. He wasn’t taking this seriously. Maybe he would when he was locked up, or dead, but it would be too late by then.

“Larry?”

The rain hammered down, sliding off the brim of Lundquist’s hat and washing down to join the quagmire that had formed where the muddy path had been.

They couldn’t wait for him.

“Keep moving,” he called out.

They climbed towards the ridge, their boots slipping on the wet muck underfoot.

“Lundquist, come in… Lundquist, do you copy…”

He had put the radio into his pocket when the rain started to fall again, and he heard it crackle into life. He reached inside, took it out, and put it to his ear.

“This is Morris Finch. Are you there?”

“I’m here, Morris,” he said between gasps.

There was a blast of lightning and a hiss of static that obscured Finch’s next sentence.

“What was that? Please repeat.”

“Said that there’s someone… wants to talk to you.”

“Who?” More static, more gasps for breath. “Jesus, Morris, I can’t hear shit.”

The line cleared, and a different voice became audible. “Officer Lundquist, this is Lieutenant Colonel Alex Maguire from the Michigan National Guard. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Lundquist said, gasping again.

“I’m the commander of the troops assigned… help you find… fugitive.”

“Glad to hear your voice, Colonel.”

“You were lucky… at Fort Custer normally… up at Nicolet for manoeuvres… jumped onto a truck… over here.”

“How many men?”

“Five hundred, plus equipment… couple of Black Hawks… come in handy… reinforcing your cordon… advance and flush him out.”

“Come now. We’ve got three men down, maybe four!”

There was another squall of interference, and when it cleared away Morris was talking again.

“… and it’s all going to be fine.”

“Morris! Tell them to come now! He’s killing us up here!”

Another flash of lightning; another fizz of static.

Morris Finch didn’t respond.

Lundquist had to fight the urge to fling the radio into the trees. He put it back into his pocket.

He looked back.

Still no sign of Larry Maddocks.

Leland was running next to him.

He heard the crack of the rifle over the sound of the falling rain. Leland ran on for another two steps before he fell forwards, ploughing a furrow through the mulch. He pressed up with his arms and looked down in dumb incomprehension at his belly. The bullet had burrowed through his back, sliced through his guts and exited through the front of his raincoat.

Lundquist stopped running. For a moment, he stood there paralysed, his mouth hanging open.

Lightning flashed like the sun.

“Pops!” Michael screamed over the slamming of the water.

Lundquist thought he saw something moving in the undergrowth.

“Pops! He’s here!”

Lundquist squinted into the murkiness, his hands shaking with the sudden torrent of adrenaline.

Milton was behind them.

Close.

Walker Price was dead.

Leland Mulligan was dead.

Larry Maddocks.

Harley Ward.

Dylan Fox.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

There were only three of them left.

“Get behind the trees!” he yelled out to his son and Chandler.

Michael didn’t hear him. He brought up his rifle and loosed off a round into the bushes, then another, and another. His rifle cracked out against the sound of the rain.

“Stop firing!” Lundquist shouted, not daring to take his eyes away from the bushes where he thought he had seen movement. “Get into cover!”

Michael fired again, his eyes bugged out with fright. His finger pulled and pulled, spent shells ejecting and new ones chambering, the recoil juddering against his shoulder.

“Stop firing! Save your ammo!”

Michael heard him this time. He looked over in his direction, and Lundquist saw how terrified the boy was.

“Come on,” he shouted, starting back up the slope. There was a stand of large hemlocks, and he pressed himself behind the trunk of the nearest. Michael arrived a moment later, the barrel of his rifle trembling. He squeezed next to his father, aiming out around the side of the tree. Thomas Chandler sheltered behind another tree.

“Shit,” Michael said. “He shot Leland.”

Lundquist nodded. “Probably got Larry, too.”

“Oh fuck.” Michael’s larynx bobbed up and down in his throat as he tried to swallow the fear away.

Think.

Milton had changed tactics. He had stopped running.

Think.

Lundquist looked up at the sky. The thunderhead was low and as black as pitch. It could be midnight for all the difference that would make. The rain was coming down as hard as ever, and visibility was reduced to twenty or thirty feet. The rainwater fell to join the spate that was forming around his feet. Lundquist picked his shirt away from his chest, but it sucked back again, stuck to his skin, drenched through.

“Listen to me,” he said to them both, his voice low and urgent. “We can’t stay here. He’ll just circle around and pick us off. We need to get moving.”

“Where?”

“Back home.”

“We’ll never make—”

“I know the terrain around here better than he does. We—”

“Lundquist.”

They both heard the shout over the clamour.

Lundquist felt his heart jackhammer in his chest. He swallowed hard, feeling the anger starting to surge. He channelled that, instead, and the fear receded, if only a little.

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

The voice was coming from below them, down the slope.

“The National Guard will be here soon,” he called back. “You know that, you son of a bitch? Five hundred soldiers. You’ve got no chance.”

“We’ll have to disagree on that, won’t we?”

Lundquist looked across to his son. Michael was gripping the rifle tightly in both hands.

“You asked what I used to do. Do you still want to know?”

“You were a soldier.”

“An assassin, Lundquist. I killed people for my country. I killed one hundred and thirty-six men and women.”

“Bullshit.”

Milton didn’t answer. Lundquist looked around the edge of the tree, trying to see him. There was nothing.

“And now you’re out of your depth,” Lundquist said, trying to get him to speak again.

“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

“How’s that arm of yours?”

There was a short pause. “It’s been better. But I don’t need both arms for what I’m going to do to you.”

“You think you can take us out with a bow and arrow?”

“I’ve got a rifle now.”

“You’re still outnumbered.”

“I’ve done all right so far. Only three of you left, plus those two you left behind at the falls. Or maybe I already took those two out, who knows?”

Lundquist tried to pinpoint the direction of Milton’s voice. He was a decent distance away and maybe off to the right, maybe moving between sentences, but it was difficult to be sure. The sound bounced around the tree trunks, and the rain deadened everything. He took his hand off the barrel of his rifle and scrubbed water from his eyes.

“Milton!”

Milton didn’t answer.

“Want to know the way I see it?”

He didn’t answer.

“We outnumber you, and you have one arm. There are five hundred soldiers coming into these woods right now. They’ve got helicopters, too, probably already on their way. If I were you, I’d come out of there with my hands up right now and hope to God that I’m feeling disposed to bringing you in alive.”

“Don’t think I’m going to be doing that.”

He turned to Chandler and Michael and hissed, “We need to move. You ready?”

Michael’s eyes were wide. Chandler’s face was bloodless. Lundquist glared at them both, nodded up the slope, and said, “You two go first, and I’ll cover you. Get up to those trees, see them?”

They nodded.

“Then you cover me when I come up. Okay?”

“Yes.”

Lundquist looked up into the sky, allowing the rain to wash off his face for a second.

He took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the rifle.

“Now!”

Lundquist crouched and swung around the edge of the tree, the rifle aimed into the forest where he thought Milton’s voice had come from last. Michael and Chandler ran liked scalded deer, their feet slipping and sliding through the mud and the cataract of water that was coming down the slope from above. He thought he saw a shimmer of movement from within a stand of hardwoods. There was the sharp retort of a rifle. Lundquist swung the rifle up and aimed at the spot, firing two rounds in quick succession. He stared hard into the underbrush, straining his eyes and ears, but there was nothing. He glanced up the slope and saw Michael at the top, turning back to him and crouching down behind a fall of rocks, aiming back down into the woods. Chandler’s head appeared around the trunk of a large oak.

Milton had missed.

He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering his scripture.

The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life.

He opened his eyes and ran. He pulled his boots out of the quagmire, each step splashing in the torrent as he ran as hard as he could to his son. He stared fearfully at Michael’s face, terrified that it would register the sight of Milton below him, the preface to the bullet that would find him between the shoulder blades, but Michael’s face remained intent with concentration. The bullet didn’t come.

“Did you get him?” the boy cried out as he slipped into cover behind him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

Tom Chandler hurried over to them.

“What do we do?”

“We need to get as far away from here as we can. We need to keep running.”

Chapter 38

They had made it to the top of the ridge and then the uplands beyond when the radio crackled with static from the lightning.

Lundquist put it to his ear and tried to press it there as he ran on.

“We… helicopters… too… thunder.”

“This is Lundquist. Say again. Repeat, say again.”

“Dangerous… lightning… on foot.”

“I can’t hear you.”

The radio buzzed and fizzed and popped, and when the static dissolved, the voice wasn’t one he recognised, and he couldn’t even be sure it was meant for him.

“Dammit!” He was gasping from the hard running. “This is Lundquist. We are under attack. Men down, repeat, men down. We need help.”

The lightning crackled again, lighting up the uplands, and then the thunder rolled over them, on top of them, so loud that it felt like his ears were ringing. Lightning flashed again, and Lundquist suddenly worried how wise it was to be out in the open when the storm was directly overhead. The whiteness stained a lattice against his retinas, and he blinked it away, squeezing the water out of his eyes, and then it was gone and the uplands were dark again.

“They’re not coming,” Michael gasped out.

“I don’t know… this weather…”

“We’re on our own,” the boy said, his eyes still bulging.

Lundquist knew that they had to hurry. The land around here was horribly open. Milton wouldn’t need to track them; he would be able to see them. He remembered the creek that they had followed earlier, cutting through the uplands, down the rise and then into the thicker forest. But where was it? He couldn’t remember. What about the falls that Milton had climbed to get away from them? If they could find the river, maybe they could climb down there and get back to Truth. If they could keep Milton behind them, there was no reason why they wouldn’t be able to get to help in one piece.

“Dad?” Michael called.

“We’re going to be okay,” he shouted over the roar of the storm. “I know a way down.”

“What about—”

“He’s behind us, right?”

“Yes.”

“We keep him behind us. He’s been shot. We’re halfway home, boys, you hear? We just have to keep on going.”

Rain pelted his face. He reached up to wipe his eyes when a gust of wind swept across them, snagging the brim of his hat and tearing it away. It jerked up into the sky, twenty feet high in an instant, and then spun away behind them.

Lundquist was past caring.

They started off, rushing out of the tree line and onto the wide-open space of the uplands. They covered the first hundred feet without incident but then Chandler turned and started to trot backwards so that he could look behind them, with his eye off the path ahead. His left leg plunged down into a rabbit hole, and he overbalanced, his leg buckling with a stomach-churning crack as he fell to the left, the leg still planted in the hole. Chandler screamed.

Milton didn’t think it would be possible for it to rain any harder, but he had been wrong.

It was.

He reached the top of the ridge and held himself still, listening hard. He heard nothing. His breath coming thick and heavy, he poked his head up and surveyed the terrain. The upland was as he remembered it: broad ridges with rounded summits and wide, shallow valleys. There were rough grasslands, scrub, and pockets of trees. Plantations of conifer came in geometric blocks and formed hard, angular lines across the rounded slopes of the ridges. Patches of scrubby woodland, pastures, and marsh added to the mosaic.

He saw the three men in the near distance. Five hundred yards? They were running and, as he watched them, Chandler turned around to look for him, trotting backwards and tripping. He dropped down onto his side, and Milton heard the scream even above the thunder and the ululation of the rain. He watched as Callow stooped down to him. He heard another scream of pain. Chandler stayed on the ground as Lundquist turned and knelt, his rifle sweeping the ridge as he tried to find Milton.

He pressed himself down into the wet ground and watched.

Callow slipped his hand beneath Chandler’s shoulders and hauled him upright. Another scream as his left leg was freed from the hole into which it had jammed. They started towards the south again. Chandler was hopping on his right leg, Callow was trying to support him on his right hand side, Lundquist was jogging ahead then turning back to cover them.

Knee ligaments?

A broken ankle?

A broken leg?

Milton calculated.

The odds had swung further in his direction, but he was still outnumbered and outgunned. The magazine of the rifle that he had taken from the dead man had been almost empty, with just the two rounds left in the chamber. They were gone now. The young cop had fallen in a spot where he wouldn’t have been able to get to him without getting shot himself. He wondered whether he should go back now and look for his weapon. He decided against it. He didn’t want to give them any more of a head start. The bow would have to do.

He squinted out into the rain. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to take them if he followed them out into the upland. They had long guns, and as soon as he came out of cover, they would be able to start taking potshots at him. He could make himself difficult to hit, and the weather would mean that they would need luck to make the shot, but, at the very least they would be able to keep him out of range. It would be a stalemate, apart from the fact that he didn’t know how long he would be able to survive out in the open in the middle of the storm. They were better equipped than he was. Better dressed. They would be able to last out the weather. He didn’t know if he could.

He stopped beneath the shelter of a pin oak and tried to remember the map.

He needed a way to get ahead of them.

Lundquist stopped, turned, and raised his rifle. He was looking back into the wind, a constant gust that seemed impossibly freighted with rain. He narrowed his eyes to slits, then scooped the water away, squinting so hard that the muscles in his brow started to ache.

No sign of Milton.

Where was he?

A wounded deer must feel like this. Injured, helpless, the hunter stalking it, sighting it, waiting for the proper time to finish it off.

“Come on! Too slow! We need to go faster!”

“This is as quick as I can manage,” Michael yelled out over the noise. “His leg, Pops… Jesus.”

Chandler moaned. The boy had snapped the tibia in his left leg. Lundquist had heard the crack, loud as a gunshot. His leg had been wedged up to the knee, and the sudden shift had torqued the bone too much. A compound fracture. The bone had sheared in two, one sharp half slicing through the skin at his shin. The colour in his face had disappeared completely now. He looked like he was about to faint.

“We’re going to have to leave him.”

“We can’t.”

“He’s going to get us killed.”

“No,” Michael shouted at him, suddenly angry. “No man left behind. You know that as well as I do.”

Dammit.

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.

Lundquist turned back to the south. He could leave them, he thought. He should leave them. He had God’s word to consider. He had been chosen by God to do His will. Michael and Chandler would give Milton something to think about, buy him enough time to get all the way clear. There was backup ahead, Randy Watts and Archie McClennan, the two men he had left at the falls. He could run back to Truth and leave this whole sorry mess to the National Guard.

He could.

But…

Michael was right. No man left behind.

Dammit.

He raised his rifle again. The wind blasted him and the rain soaked him to the skin, but there was still no sign of John Milton.

Come on, you bastard. Show yourself.

Milton headed across the upland, following a path through a shallow depression that would shield him from Lundquist. He ran as hard as he could, tripping and falling three times, but, after each fall, he scrambled back to his feet and kept going. He ran for a full hour and, by the time he arrived at the creek, he was dizzy from the pain.

The river was in full spate now, swollen by the cloudburst, and the water had flowed over its banks. A great torrent swept down from the hills, sweeping over the goat track and surging around the trunks of the trees that had sprouted in the rich soil.

Ahead of him, the water reached the fall that he had climbed earlier and piled over the edge, the cacophonous barrage competing with the sound of the rain and the thunder.

Milton lowered himself down a slope of scree and onto the gently cambered wall of the creek, and then he saw them.

Fifty feet behind him, laboriously clambering down the side of the creek, the rushing water springing at their feet.

He dropped low, scuttering down the scree, pebbles clattering around him as a tiny avalanche was pouring down into the water. There were slabs of rock stacked up along the edge of the river. Milton slid between them and lowered himself into the water. My God, it was cold. The fierce current tugged at his legs, jerking him downstream. There were straggles of thick root from the bald cypress tree that grew on the bank, and Milton knotted them in his right fist, the fingers of his left hand pressed into a rocky cleft.

The water was freezing. He wouldn’t be able to stay in it for more than a minute or two.

He heard them approach, bickering, their footsteps clattering across the loose rocks, and he lowered his head beneath the surface. The water was so cold that it seemed to sting his brain, and he gasped, sucking a mouthful into his nose and the back of his throat. His eyes bulged, and his every instinct was to drag himself to the surface, but he squeezed his eyes shut and counted to five, then pulled up against the roots and took a deep, hungry breath.

He heard their footsteps and muffled voices right overhead, and he ducked down again, praying that they would keep walking, praying that they didn’t stop, praying the bow across his shoulder wasn’t poking out of the water.

He prayed they didn’t see him, helpless, below them.

The water closed over his head, and time became a concept impossible to quantify.

One minute?

Thirty seconds?

Ten seconds?

He surfaced, gasping for breath again, and saw the back of Michael Callow’s head as it disappeared beneath the line of the bank ten yards downstream.

Milton reached out with his right hand, fastened it around a rock, and used it as an anchor, tugging up and slithering out of the water and onto the bank. He pressed himself to his feet, took the bow, notched his second-to-last arrow, and pulled back on the string. He knew before it happened that he was going to fall. Blood rushed away from his head, and he quickly became dizzy, his balance awry, and he stumbled across the flooded path until he tripped and went down to his knees. The water splashed around him, and he must have groaned, because Chandler, who was being dragged sideways by Callow, now turned his head and saw him.

Chandler had his pistol aimed down and to the side, into the river, and he was swinging it around when Milton let go of the string.

The arrow hit the boy in the gut. He fell backwards, breaking free of Callow’s supporting grip, slumped against the rocky wall, and slid down onto his backside.

Now Callow turned.

Lundquist heard the commotion, and he, too, turned.

There was no time to notch another arrow, so Milton clambered up and charged them. He crashed into them both, all three men pitching onto the rocks. Callow tripped and slammed down backwards onto a large boulder, gasping as the wind was punched out of his lungs. His rifle was jarred out of his hands, and it spun away into the river and disappeared.

Lundquist felt solid and muscular, and he knew that Milton couldn’t use his left arm. He rolled on top of him, concentrating his weight on Milton’s right arm, squaring his forearm and striking down with the elbow. It drew a glancing impact against Milton’s forehead, enough to dim his vision for a moment.

“I’m going to kill you,” he snarled.

He tried to use his elbow again, but Milton jerked his head aside.

“Michael! Help!”

He tried to strike down again, but Milton pressed his feet flat and pushed up, bucking Lundquist away from him.

Callow was still on the ground.

Lundquist and Milton staggered up and stumbled farther down the path. It bulged upwards for a short stretch, lifting it above the swollen river, a drop of a few feet on the right hand side with spume spraying up from where the water clashed against the rock. The falls were close now.

They closed again and Lundquist threw a punch that Milton blocked. He reached in with his right hand and grappled the older man closer to him. Lundquist forced his rifle up, pushing until the gun was held vertically between their bodies, pointing at the thunderclouds. Lundquist’s right hand was pressed against Milton’s chest, his fingers still looped through the trigger guard. It was just at the right height for Milton to reach across with his left hand. He grimaced from the blast of pain as he grabbed Lundquist’s fingers and started to bend them backwards, one by one. The hand came away from the trigger, but he still had his left fastened around the barrel.

Milton butted him in the nose.

Lundquist relinquished the long gun and stumbled backwards.

Milton had the rifle now. He swung it at him, one handed, the stock slamming into Lundquist’s left shoulder.

The older man reached the end of the path overlooking the falls as the water rolled over the edge and crashed down sixty feet to the plunge pool below. He tottered on the edge, his arms windmilling comically, before he took another backward step, his foot pawing the air, finding nothing.

He overbalanced and fell into space.

Milton dropped to his knees and crawled to the edge. Lundquist hit the water on his back and disappeared underneath the surface.

“Pops!”

Callow shoved Milton out of the way and leapt straight out from the lip of the cliff, turning in the air and hitting the water in an untidy dive.

He was swept beneath the surface, too.

Milton reversed the rifle and aimed down at the river, watching the frothy torrent, but there was no sign of either of them. He remembered the two men, who he guessed must have been left here, but there was no sign of them, either. The water roared, loud and angry and hungry, and still there was nothing. The current must have been strong, an underwater riptide that might have kept them below the surface or dashed them onto the rocks.

Milton waited for another ten seconds, staring down onto the roiling surface, tons of water crashing down every second, and finally, he saw them.

The river had carried them fifty feet away. Lundquist was on his back, Callow with his arm wrapped beneath his father’s shoulders. Both of them were kicking against the pull of the water, slowly sliding across to the opposite bank.

Milton raised the rifle. He tried to sight it, but he could barely raise his left arm to brace it, and the barrel twitched to the left and right. He fired anyway, the round drilling into the rocks on the side of the bank.

He fired again.

The shot landed short, throwing a jet of spray into the air.

He fired again.

Wide to the right.

Callow must have noticed that they were being fired upon, for instead of fighting the current, he submitted to it. They were drawn back into the centre of the river, the water picking up speed. The two men, treading water to try to keep their heads above the surface, were spun backwards, sucked downstream, and borne out of sight.

Milton closed his eyes and rolled over onto his back.

He drifted into unconsciousness, woken by a boom of thunder like the sky being ripped asunder. He raised his head. He couldn’t stay here.

He had to get down.

Had to follow them.

He went back to Chandler’s body. He had died, his hands grasped uselessly around the shaft of the arrow that was still planted in his gut. He searched his body, found a packet of trail mix and three energy bars, and stuffed them into his pockets. There was nothing else of use.

He went back to the lip of the cliff and tossed the bow down. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, and then slithered over the edge. He remembered the first few handholds from before, but he was weaker now, much weaker, and his feet slid off the ledges and out of the niches that should have offered an easy start to the descent. He almost fell twice, both times saving himself with his right hand, and, as he swung out from the rock, his fingers burned as they clawed the roots and handholds as if they were functioning independently of the fuzz in his brain.

He made it to thirty feet down, halfway, and then somehow slid and scraped down another fifteen feet. He had neglected to plot a route, and now he found himself above a particularly sheer stretch of the face. He knew that there was no way that he would be able to find the strength to go back up again, or even to shimmy across so that he could get to the easier part of the face.

Nothing else for it.

He closed his eyes and pushed himself off, a fifteen-foot drop with an impact strong enough that his legs buckled, and he slammed back down onto his chest.

The crash and boom of the falling water was like white noise, and before he could fight it, he lost consciousness again.

Chapter 39

Milton tried not to close his eyes, but they were intolerably heavy, and he couldn’t resist.

His tiredness engulfed him like floodwater overwhelming a levee.

He could hear the thunder of the waterfall and voices and the sound of a car and then the long boom of a jet’s engine. The sound of a door opening softly. The sound a magazine makes when it clicks home, the sound of a bullet being pressed into the chamber. He heard the sound of children’s voices and a plastic ball bouncing against the ground, but it was faint and peaceful, and it did not disturb him. He was on a motorbike. He was wearing the uniform of a motorcycle courier. He was in a favela, but he couldn’t remember where, and then he wasn’t, he was somewhere else, and he heard a doorbell. A finger pressed the doorbell, his finger, and then he heard the sound of the door being unlocked and opening on hinges that needed oil. He saw a face, a man who didn’t know him, but a man that he knew.

Someone familiar laid her hand on his shoulder and pointed to the dark square of a grave and said, “We need to dig a little deeper,” and she lifted a shovel and sank it into the soft earth. She had a tattoo on the side of her torso, eight bars of black. He was holding a pistol. Now he was on a wide road next to a river he recognised. A car crashed into a tree ahead of him, a man ran from the car, and Milton knew that he was supposed to follow the man. Someone familiar was holding another pistol. He saw blood: splatters of blood on the walls, blood on his shirt, blood on the floor. He was Death, come to drink his fill. He saw a group of children in the favela playing with their ball. He saw more blood. He saw a woman. She was young and pretty and scared. He saw the pistols, both of them, and saw them turn to the woman, and then there was the sound of a click and then an explosion and then—

Milton awoke to the sound of crashing water. He was lying on the ground, on a hard rocky floor, sharp edges pressing into his back. He opened his eyes into complete darkness. He closed them and then opened them again. Still dark. He reached out with his left hand, tried to put pressure on it, and felt the now familiar throb from the bullet wound in his arm.

He remembered being shot.

He remembered the men he had hunted down.

Six men.

Six more dead men on his ledger.

He remembered Morten Lundquist and Michael Callow going over the edge of the falls, disappearing into the pool and then being borne away on the swollen current.

He had been wrong, though, about the dark. It wasn’t complete. He rolled over onto his right side and saw how it lightened, just a little, in the direction that the sound of the falling water was coming from. He made out the irregular, jagged mouth of a cave.

He saw a fire, an arm’s length away, damp wood spitting and fizzing.

A small pile of firewood sat next to it.

Who had made the fire?

Had he made it?

He tried to keep his eyes open, but he couldn’t. Sleep swept up at him from behind, and despite his attempts to keep ahead of it, it was faster than he could ever hope to be.

He closed his eyes.

When he awoke again, the storm had passed. He could still hear the crash of the water from the fall, but there was no thunder and, as he listened to the quality of the noise, he couldn’t hear the beat of the rain. He opened his eyes, and the cave was brighter, too, faint sunlight entering the chamber and reaching halfway inside, where it was eventually consumed. Milton was lying on a bed of springy ferns. They were damp, but not wet, and more comfortable than the naked stone of the floor. He was close to a small fire, a lattice of branches that had burnt about halfway through.

He had no idea how long he had been asleep.

He had no idea where he was.

He had been feverish, he knew that, but it seemed to have passed. His head felt clearer than it had for a long time.

He gingerly brought his left arm around so that he could look at the injury. He felt pressure in the wound, and when he touched his fingers to the dressing, he felt the soft, gentle motion beneath. He carefully peeled it back. He looked at the maggots, white and fat, twisting and turning as they finished the work that they had started. The wound was clean and beginning to heal. They had done an excellent job. The dead, necrotic flesh had been eaten, and the blood that gathered at the edges as he abraded them was fresh crimson. He poked the new, pink flesh and felt a prickle of discomfort. Another good sign. It was healing.

He tipped his arm over and shook it, the engorged maggots falling to the ground. They lay there for a moment, bloated and stunned, before they started to wriggle and crawl away.

He would wash the wound in the water outside, use the ointment in his pocket and—

He heard voices.

He held his breath, straining his ears.

He heard a voice, a man’s voice, and then the squelch of static.

What did that mean?

Lundquist?

No.

He remembered: the National Guard.

Lundquist had warned him.

Five hundred men.

He crawled to the entrance to the cave and looked out.

The opening was nestled in the face of the cliff, screened by underbrush.

There was a patrol of four men at the foot of the fall. Ten feet away from him. They had stopped there, one of them operating a field radio that he wore on his back. The falling water obscured the conversation too much for Milton to be able to eavesdrop, but the occasional word was audible: “sector,” “nothing,” and an enquiring sentence that concluded with “orders?” The operator listened to the inaudible reply, nodded his satisfaction, and put the radio away. His comrades gathered around as he faced away from Milton and relayed what had been said.

Milton had no choice but to stay where he was. If they came any closer, they wouldn’t be able to miss the mouth of the cave. They would look inside, see the signs of his habitation, and find him. If they did that, he wouldn’t resist. They had done nothing to him. They were just following their orders. He could imagine how Lundquist had painted him. It was possible that their orders were to shoot him on sight.

Milton would have to accept that.

But they did not come in his direction.

Instead, they turned to the east and set off into the underbrush, following the line of the ridge.

Milton realised what had happened. The soldiers had carved the area into sectors. Each team would have been given a group of sectors to investigate. He had been fortunate; he was in the seam where one sector ended and the next one began. If there was a team from the uplands atop the falls above him, then they must have been tasked with the path down the face. Or perhaps the face was the boundary, and they had neglected to check it. These four boys were being routed away to continue the search in the adjacent map square.

Milton had enjoyed very little luck since he had arrived in Truth. This was luck. Perhaps it marked a change in his fortunes.

He knew that he would have a narrow window within which he could drive home his advantage. The search teams were likely to advance in a rough line so as not to leave gaps that he could slip through. That meant that the team that was adjacent to the one that he had just seen was most likely to turn east at the same time, and that they would be at the fall before too long. The cordon behind him, from the uplands heading south to his position, would also be moving. But the path directly to the south was open now. It had been searched and would have been reported as clear.

If Milton moved quickly, he might be able to slip between them and get out of the woods.

He hurried back to the fire, broke it apart, and returned to the mouth of the cave. He scoured the tree line again, but he could not hear or see anything. He emerged into the sunlight and trod carefully on the wet rocks, reaching the still swollen river that had carried Lundquist and Callow away, and then followed it to the south.