Текст книги "Winter Kill "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Chapter Seven

A couple of yards ahead, the rest of the search party stopped walking and began to look around.

“Less than a mile away,” Norris Peterson called.

“That’s a semi-automatic,” Adam said as Rob spoke into his radio.

“Who’s firing?” Rob demanded. He wasn’t sure he would be able to hear the answer over the thunder of his heart. His mouth was so dry it was hard to unstick the words from the roof of his mouth. “This is Deputy Haskell. We’re hearing shots—”

Zeke’s voice cut in. “Rob, we’re taking fire.”

What the hell? Once upon a time Nearby had been a nice, quiet, peaceful place to live and work. Now it was turning into a war zone. “You’re…? Are you sure it’s not some asshole hunter?”

“Hell yes, I’m sure!” Zeke returned.

Rob swore. “From where? What direction are the shots coming from?” He hastily unfolded his map. “What’s your position?”

“Widow’s Peak. Somebody’s up there with a fucking assault rifle taking potshots at us.”

The shots sounded tinny and distant over the radio compared to the crack and rolling echo of their real life counterpoint.

“We’ve got to get these civilians off this mountain,” Adam said.

Rob nodded distractedly, trying to coordinate with the other team leaders. Everybody was hitting the airwaves at the same time. He was dimly aware of Adam jogging down the hillside, ordering everyone down to the shelter of the trees, and it was a relief to know that at least he had solid and sensible support at hand. Right now he needed all the support he could get.

“Zeke, is anyone hit? Hurt?” he asked.

There was a burst of static. “Negative,” Zeke said.

The relief left Rob weak.

“We need everybody off this mountain right now. Move it!” Adam called. How the hell did he manage to sound so calm—like he did this every day?

That official permission seemed to be what everyone was waiting for, because the remaining searchers began a hasty descent, slowed only by the terrain. Thank God for that. Thank God for Adam.

Rob was calculating how long it would take to cut across the ridge, when Adam loped back up, squatting down beside him.

“Are they pinned down?” Adam asked. “Can they withdraw?”

Rob shook his head. I don’t know. “Zeke, get your party out of there,” he ordered.

Zeke’s voice came over the radio with sudden and exasperated clarity. “I would LIKE to do that, Haskell. We’re pinned down. Copy?”

“God damn it,” Adam muttered.

“Roger that,” Rob answered both Adam and Zeke.

“Deputy Haskell? This is Deputy Sheriff Sergeant Laird with Medford—”

At the same time another voice burst in, “This is Klamath Falls Sheriff’s Deputy O’Neill. We are moving to intercept.”

He looked at Adam in alarm. Moving to intercept? Did these cowboys think they were playing Xbox? All he needed was Zeke’s group of civilians getting caught in interterritorial crossfire.

Adam was frowning over this exchange. “This doesn’t fit,” he said.

“Uh… Yeah. Well, tell it to the asshole with the rifle.”

“What do you want to do?” Adam asked.

Rob had to smother a surge of something alarmingly close to hysterical laughter. Adam was asking him? How the hell was he supposed to know what to do in a situation like this? Things like this did not happen in his world.

He pointed to the map. “This is Widow’s Peak. This is Zeke’s position. Roughly. And this is us.”

Adam met his eyes. “You want to try to circle in on the shooter? Sweep in from behind?”

Rob drew in a deep breath. He nodded tightly. “I do. Yeah.” He folded the map again. “It’s not much of a plan, but it’s all I’ve got. It sounds to me like Medford and Klamath Falls will provide all the distraction we need. What I know for sure is we—I—need to get over there before someone gets killed.”

He was thinking rapidly. He knew the area well—he’d taken a lot of photographs up here through the years—the snow would slow them down. Ten minutes? Maybe fifteen? Even so, he and Adam were Zeke’s best chance of reinforcements.

“Right.” Adam nodded. “Let’s do it.”

He sounded like he thought it was a perfectly reasonable plan. “Pistols against an assault rifle,” Rob felt obliged to point out.

To his surprise, Adam’s mouth twisted in a chilly smile. He rose, saying, “All that matters is who holds the pistol.”

* * * * *

They made good time, and in twelve minutes they crested the ridge behind Widow’s Peak and began their descent. Physical exertion—the useful expenditure of all that adrenaline—and time to think had helped Rob regain his equilibrium. He wasn’t happy, but anger and determination had replaced his fear that he was not equipped to handle this crisis. Someone had to handle it. And by God, it looked like it was going to have to be him.

He was just glad he had Adam as backup. This way, at least one of them maybe knew what he was doing.

The slope was slippery with pine needles, loose stones, and wet earth. The snow had melted where the sunlight speared through the tree branches. Most of the hillside was in deep shade, and there was still ice in sharp crevices of rock. Even so, they moved swiftly, keeping about fifty feet between them.

The wind rushing overhead through the sugar and ponderosa pines sounded like the ocean. The spaces between shots were longer now. Every time Rob hoped the standoff was over, another crack of gunfire split the wind-scoured emptiness.

After several hundred yards they stopped to catch their breath. Below them was a large log cabin in a grassy green valley dotted with tall pines. The metal roofs of a couple of outlying buildings flashed in the irresolute sunlight .

Rob motioned to Adam. When Adam joined him, he handed over his field glasses. Adam took the glasses.

Rob said quietly, “That’s Sandy Gibbs’s place. He’s what you might call our local survivalist nut. The they’ll-have-to-pry-my-gun-from-my-cold-dead-fingers type.”

Adam studied the spread beneath them. “You think Gibbs is our shooter?”

“I think there’s a damn good chance.”

“Has he got weapons stockpiled in there?”

“Oh hell yeah. I don’t doubt he’s got a goddamned arsenal in there. My concern is that he may also have Tiffany.”

Adam’s pale brows drew together. “Tiffany?”

“Maybe. Maybe he went courting the old-fashioned way. I can’t think of any other reason he’d do this.”

“You think this Gibbs kidnapped a teenaged girl and murdered her mother?”

“He’s racist. Out and out. And he sees himself as a modern day mountain man. I know it probably sounds like a stretch, but I could see how killing a Native American woman and taking her child fits his movie script.”

Adam was silent, thinking it over. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s possible.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Cynthia Joseph’s body was staged. Artifacts from the museum were stolen. The kind of offender you’re talking about wouldn’t bother with either of those things.”

“You’d know more about that than me. I can tell you that Gibbs has a history of harassing women, especially young women. Nothing major, nothing serious, he’s just obnoxious and persistent.”

Adam scowled, possibly at the notion of obnoxious and persistent harassment not being serious. “Maybe,” he said again, but he still sounded skeptical. “Here’s another theory. Gibbs noticed the woods were crawling with law enforcement and jumped to the conclusion we were here for him.”

Rob’s eyes narrowed, considering this theory. “Maybe.”

“Paranoia is part of the profile.”

“That could be true. You’ve also got to admit that this is a pretty big coincidence.”

“I wouldn’t call it a coincidence. I’d call it cause and effect.” Adam handed back the field glasses. “If Gibbs is the shooter, he’s got a sniper tower set up somewhere along that treeline.”

Rob trained the glasses on the mature trees overlooking the slope leading from the valley plateau to the forest slopes below. As he watched, he caught a metallic glint in the branches of a tall stand. Sunlight on a gun barrel. “Good call. Ten o’clock high.”

“One or more shooters?”

“Looks like just one. I can’t be sure.”

“It sounds like one. Any movement from below?”

“Negative. That doesn’t mean they’re not on their way.”

“True. How do you want to handle it?”

Rob said slowly, “He’s not going to stay up there forever. He’ll be coming back to earth even if it’s just to rearm. More likely, he’ll dig in for a siege. I say we get down to that cabin and wait for him.”

“Hm.” Adam frowned.

“We could end this fast and without anyone getting hurt. He won’t be expecting us. And we’ll have a chance to look for Tiffany.”

Adam’s face jerked to his. “We don’t have a warrant to search that cabin.”

“We have probable cause. He’s up there shooting at law enforcement. How much more probable cause do we need?”

“I’ll tell you what we don’t need. Another Ruby Ridge.”

Rob had been eleven at the time of Ruby Ridge. He barely remembered the details. What he did remember was that government agents had overstepped, and presumably innocent people had died. Adam would have been about the same age, but apparently Ruby Ridge was a sore spot with the FBI.

“This is not the same situation. I mean it’s not parallel.”

That didn’t seem to reassure Adam. “If we do end up trying to prosecute Gibbs for Joseph’s death—after we barge in there without a warrant—you know as well as I do that anything we find will be inadmissible.”

That was true. Adam was looking at the bigger picture. That was probably the FBI way. Rob said, “You know what? If we can save that kid’s life, I don’t care about the rest of it. I’ll deal with the rest of it when I get there.”

“Rob…” Adam rubbed his fist against his forehead.

“Listen to me,” Rob said. “We could wait for a warrant, and in the meantime Gibbs is going to barricade himself in that cabin. Maybe with Tiffany trapped inside there with him. Or maybe he sits up there in his sniper tower, and we sit here waiting for everybody else to get into position, and then KPD trots a trained negotiator up here to try and chat with him for a few hours. Or maybe a few days.”

Adam shook his head. He was weakening, though, and Rob kept talking. “From what I know of Gibbs, I think we’re looking at a lengthy standoff, and eventually, either way, we’re going to have to shoot him or tear gas that cabin and go in after him. Unless he kills himself first—and anybody else in there with him.”

After a moment, Adam said, “Do you have a plan or are we just going to break a window and climb inside to wait?”

Rob raised the field glasses once more and studied the cabin. “My plan only stretches to us hightailing it down there and intercepting him on his way back to the cabin.”

“On his way to the cabin or inside the cabin?”

Rob lowered the glasses. He looked at Adam. “We play it by ear.” It wasn’t as reckless as it probably sounded to Adam. One or two guys who knew what they were doing could get into that cabin and take down Gibbs before he ever knew what hit him. Maybe it wasn’t the way they’d do it in the FBI. It wasn’t protocol, but Adam wasn’t running this case. He’d said himself that he and Russell were there to offer support and backup as required. And what Rob required was…he met Adam’s intense, dark gaze…probably unfair to ask.

“Does Gibbs live alone? Do we know for sure there aren’t other occupants in that cabin?”

“Gibbs is a loner. If there is anybody else in there, it’s Tiffany.”

Adam shook his head though it was unclear whether he was denying the possibility that Tiffany was in the cabin or Rob’s plan in general.

It was a tough one for him. Rob could see that. He already knew Adam well enough to know Adam preferred protocol. Fair enough. Protocol existed for a reason. But bad guys didn’t play by the same rules, and with or without Adam, Rob was going in there and getting Gibbs.

He didn’t say that though. He didn’t try to pressure Adam. And not only because he suspected that it wouldn’t go over well.

Adam said reluctantly, “The kind of blitz attack that you’re considering could be the best bet in a situation like this one. Gibbs won’t be expecting it. Neither will anyone else. We’ll be on our own, and if anything goes wrong, one or both of us is liable to end up dead.”

In other words, it was a hell of a chance to take on a guy you barely knew. Rob continued to watch Adam, waiting for him to decide.

Adam sighed. “Okay.”

Rob’s eyes widened. “Yeah?”

Adam scowled. “Yeah. Affirmative.”

Rob grinned and put a hand over his heart. “Agent Darling, I think I may be in love.”

Adam made a derisive noise. “If Gibbs is half the survivalist nut you think he is, he’s probably got that place booby-trapped. You do realize that, right?”

“Yep.” Rob shoved his field glasses into his backpack. “Don’t fall over any tripwires.”

“If I do, you’ll be the first to know,” Adam said darkly, and Rob laughed.

They did the last twenty yards on their bellies, and those three minutes were the longest of Rob’s life. Halfway across the wide clearing that formed the firebreak around the cabin, he started thinking about what would happen if Gibbs looked behind and spotted them. This slow motion crawl made them sitting ducks. Sweat broke out on his back and shoulders, and it was all he could do not to rush, even though he knew movement would be the most likely thing to catch Gibbs’s eye. What really scared him though was the belated thought that he might get Adam killed.

That blue and gold FBI jacket did not look like any kind of vegetation in this neighborhood, and somehow the fact that Adam had voluntarily put himself and his goddamned jacket in mortal danger made it worse.

But then they were safely behind the cabin and back on their feet. There was an armload of wood on the low deck running the length of the building, as though Gibbs had been bringing in firewood when he’d noticed the search party working its way up the mountain.

“What kind of vehicle does Gibbs own?” Adam asked, hands braced on his knees as he caught his breath. The crawl across the firebreak had not been fast. It had been strenuous.

“A pickup and a snowmobile.”

“He’s probably got them garaged in one of those outlying buildings. We need to make sure he doesn’t get to them.”

Adam straightened, lifted his foot to step onto the deck, and Rob caught his arm. “Look.” He pointed to a nearly invisible strand of wire running along the edge of the  deck. One end was fastened to a nail. The other was threaded through a stack of rusted pie tins perched casually on the far end of the deck.

Adam swore softly.

Rob said, “The good news is we know how to get his attention if we want it.” He stepped over the tripwire.

Adam followed, still looking chagrined. He drew his Glock and said curtly, “You take left. I’ll cover the right.”

Rob said, “Allow me.” He delivered a swift, hard kick to the door. The door, which turned out to be unlocked, burst open in bits of broken frame, and sagged on its hinges.

Adam dove past him, going to the right and sweeping the room with text book efficiency. Rob went left, following suit. It was a long time since he’d done anything like this—well, he’d never done anything quite like this—and his heart was thumping, his brain buzzing with adrenaline.

Adam had already moved to the next room. “Clear,” he said.

Up in his sniper’s nest, Gibbs began firing again. The good news was, he was still shooting down the mountainside, so it was unlikely he’d spotted them. The bad news was, he still had plenty of ammunition.

“He’s got a homemade grenade launcher in his bedroom,” Adam called.

“I guess it’s true about the size of a man’s gun,” Rob called back.

“No grenades.”

“That’s usually the way of it.”

The kitchen he stood in was so ordinary, it was almost disappointing. A pot of beans sat burning on the stove. Clean dishes dried in a rack on the wooden counter. It could have been any holiday rental, barring the target practice sheet of Osama Bin Laden pinned to the refrigerator. Now there was a collector’s item.

Gibbs stopped firing again.

“Haskell, you need to see this.”

Rob left the kitchen and followed Adam’s voice to what appeared to be a large pantry or stock room. Near the corner of the room was an open trap door.

Adam peered down into the room or rooms below. “It looks like he’s building a bomb shelter.”

Rob joined him. “Or a dungeon.”

They looked at each other.

Rob squatted down. “Tiffany?” he called.

There was no response. A cold, earthy draft seemed to rise through the opening.

“I’ll check it out.”

He half expected Adam to object. Adam nodded curtly. “Watch yourself.”

Rob climbed down the metal ladder and found himself in what appeared to be a very old cellar. He switched on his flashlight. The bright beam highlighted a kerosene lantern hanging on the wall and floor to ceiling shelves stocked with still more water jugs and canned goods. There was nothing particularly sinister, unless a lifetime supply of SpaghettiOs held some dark significance.

“She’s not here,” he called.

Adam replied, but Rob missed it. Something had caught his eye. A shovel leaned against one of the shelves. Rob stepped forward to investigate and realized that he had mistaken the gray sheen of a trash bag for the stone wall in the gap formed between the sides of two shelves.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I think there might be a doorway here…” He yanked the trash bag aside and sure enough there was an opening in the wall, though doorway would be an exaggeration.

“What the hell…”  He looked upward. “I think he’s digging a tunnel.” Through the dark opening he called again, “Tiffany?”

He heard a faint, indefinable noise that might have been a response—or the winter wind finding its way through the creaking timbers holding up the roof.

Rob held the flashlight high. His own shadow loomed against the uneven surface of rock and earth. “I’m going to follow this tunnel.”

Adam didn’t respond. Or maybe Rob missed his reply. His attention was on the black hole looming before him. He proceeded with caution. Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic… At least he hadn’t thought he was claustrophobic. Maybe he would be by the time he crawled out from between damp walls of earth and stone that formed a passageway so narrow he had to turn sideways to get through parts of it.

Whose idea had this been again?

The light from the cabin faded. He kept moving.

A couple of pebbles dropped from the low ceiling and hit the ground in front of him.

Not the most stable of passageways. Whatever Gibbs was doing down here, it wasn’t meeting building code, that was for sure.

“Tiffany?”

He stopped. Without warning, he had reached the end of the tunnel. He stared in disbelief at a solid wall of rock and roots and dirt.

She was not here.

For a few minutes he had been convinced they were going to find her. He had been wrong. She wasn’t here—there was no indication she had ever been here. In fact, there was no reason to think she’d ever made it up the mountain.

So why the fuck was Sandy Gibbs sitting in his tower shooting at a search party?

He realized he couldn’t hear if Gibbs was still shooting or not. In fact, he couldn’t even hear Adam.

Rob turned around in the narrow tunnel and started back the way he’d come. He had traveled several hundred yards, but he could still see the light at the end of the tunnel pooling in the cellar, illuminating all those cans of chili and corn and baked beans.

“She’s not here,” he called. “The tunnel is only about 500 yards long. It’s a dead end.”

Again no reply from Adam.

Shit. Had Adam gone dark for a reason?

Rob had gotten so carried away by the idea that Tiffany might be a prisoner in this hole in the ground, that she might be hurt, injured, dying… He’d forgotten that Gibbs was still a real and present danger.

He pulled his phone out and silently texted, Clear?

No go. The blue bar halted halfway across the screen. Message not delivered.

Given that Rob was standing in a hole in the ground, surrounded by mountains where reception was unreliable at the best of times, that really didn’t mean much.

He reached the cellar. No sign of Adam. He listened.

Silence. That was probably a good sign. One thing for sure: taking Adam out would not be a silent process.

Rob stepped onto the ladder. One hand on the railing, one foot on the first rung, he glanced up and froze as he gazed into the barrel of an M4.

The black hole of the sniper’s carbine barrel was no emptier than the eyes watching him over the gun sight.

“It’s a dead end for you, that’s for sure,” Sandy Gibbs said.

Rob unglued his tongue and said, “That would be one hell of a mistake.”

“Why’s tha—”

Adam silently materialized behind Gibbs, placing his Glock against Gibbs’s temple. “Because I’ll blow your fucking head off.” His voice was flat and there was no question he meant every word.

Gibbs’s shock was matched by Rob’s relief. For one hellish instant he’d thought that Gibbs had somehow managed to take out Adam, despite the fact that he’d heard no shot.

“Lower your weapon,” Adam said. Gibbs complied. “Hands on your head and lace your fingers together.”

Gibbs let loose a stream of obscenities, the gist of which seemed to be the Constitution granted a man the right to protect his home and property by whatever means necessary—

“Don’t worry. You’ll have your day in court, jackass.” Adam locked a hand in his collar and dragged him back from the cellar opening.

By the time Rob scrambled the rest of the way up the ladder, Gibbs was face down on his stock room floor, hands locked behind his head, still protesting his right to bear arms.

“Since when is the national forest your private property?” Rob roughly cuffed Gibbs. “You better hope to hell nobody got hurt out there.” He resisted the temptation to bang Gibbs’s head against the floor a few times. For a couple of seconds he had been about as scared as he could remember, and it wasn’t a feeling he liked.

Sandy continued to curse everyone from Frankie to the president, his voice growing hoarser and hoarser.

“Anything?” Adam asked Rob, ignoring the ranting and frothing going on at their feet.

Rob shook his head. “No. There’s no sign she was ever down there.”

“Now we know,” Adam said, which was certainly a lot more pleasant than I told you so.

Reinforcements arrived, and for awhile Rob was kept very busy with the briefing and debriefing—though brief was a misnomer if there ever was one. By the time he finally managed to radio Frankie, there were all kinds of crazy rumors circulating: Deputy Haskell had found a cache of weapons beneath Gibbs’s cabin, no, the FBI agent had captured a domestic terrorist, which was his real reason for coming to Nearby.

“Just tell me the girl is safe,” Frankie demanded. “Tell me you found her.”

“Negative. She’s not here. There’s no sign of her.”

“Then what the hell are you doing up there?” Frankie shouted, and in all the time Rob had known her, that was the closest he’d come to hearing her sound frantic.

He tried to explain yet again what they had been doing.

“What about Gibbs? Did he get away?”

“Hell no, he didn’t get away. I already told you he’s in custody.”

There was an intelligible burst of words, and then Frankie said clearly, “Back to base…we’ve got worse trouble.”

Worse trouble?

Rob felt someone’s gaze. He looked up. From the other side of the room, Adam was watching him. He said crisply into his radio, “Copy. What worse trouble?”

Frankie’s voice was harsh. “We’ve got another dead girl.”