Читать книгу The Ties That Bind - Cliff Ryder - Страница 11

The road out of Nome was little better than a rutted concrete path, but Tina quickly proved herself competent. Using a large SUV and a trailer with two ATVs, she guided their vehicle around the worst of the potholes and hazards, while simultaneously pointing out sites of interest along the way. She was a good guide, Jason realized, knowledgeable about the area, its history, people and animals. She didn’t talk too much, but kept the conversation light and interesting. And completely impersonal.

The landscape itself was one of harsh beauty. Dark-brown-and-green tundra grasses dominated the view, with distant snowcapped mountains. Birds and rabbits were plentiful, and when he rolled down the window, the wind from the ocean was crisp and cold and hinted of the coming winter. This was not a place for the weak, and those who survived here—in the city or in the surrounding areas—had a good reason to be proud.

Several hours after leaving the small town, the road wasn’t even a pretense anymore, but simply a wide gravel trail. Not long after, Tina pulled the SUV off to the side and said, “This is where the going gets rough. We’ll leave the truck here and take the ATVs the rest of the way.”

“You just leave your truck?” he asked, surprised.

She shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like anyone is likely to steal it. Where would they go?” She gestured at the empty scene around them. “Even if they went into Nome, someone would recognize it. Theft isn’t very common up here. Everyone knows everyone else.”

“Makes sense,” he said. He opened his door and climbed out of the truck, stretching his legs. “Can I help you unload everything?”

“Sure,” she said. “Do you know how to drive an ATV?”

He nodded. “I’ve used them many times.”

“Good,” she said. “Then we can skip the lesson. I’ve already loaded all our gear onto the cargo racks, so all we have to do is back them down and we’re good to go.”

Jason climbed up on the trailer, while Tina lowered the gate. “One word of caution,” she said. “If you haven’t driven one of these with a trailer attached, they don’t corner as tightly. Also, there’s plenty of icy patches, even some snow in places, so keep your speed down. If you hit an ice patch going too fast, we’ll have to bring in bulldozers to find your body.”

He grinned and started the ATV’s engine. “Got it,” he said, putting the machine in gear and guiding it down the ramp. He noticed how she watched him, making sure that he wasn’t all talk and actually knew what he was doing. He pulled his ATV over to one side, and watched as she drove the second ATV off the trailer. When it was clear, he lifted the gate and shut it firmly, latching it into place.

He crossed back over to his own machine. “Are we ready?” he asked.

“As ready as we can be,” she said. “I’ll take the lead. Just follow my trail and we should hit the coast in about an hour. From there, we’ll go north. If you want to stop for anything, just honk the horn.”

“You’re the boss,” he said. He slipped a pair of goggles over his eyes and pulled up his hood, fastening it with Velcro. There was no point in starting out cold.

She set off toward the coast, keeping a steady pace, but not going too fast. Even if he’d lost sight of her, the tracks made by her ATV in the heavy tundra grass would be easy enough to follow. Aside from startling the occasional bird or rabbit, there was little to see. Once, in the far distance, he thought he saw a moose, but with the cloud cover and shadowy light, he wasn’t certain.

According to the compass, Tina had begun bearing slightly to the north. If she was following a trail, he certainly couldn’t see it, but it was entirely possible she didn’t need one. Some people had a compass in their head, and were never truly lost. Off to his left and at quite a distance, Jason spotted what looked like some old, ruined buildings. He slowed to a stop and honked the horn.

Ahead of him, Tina slowly circled back, then pulled alongside him. “What’s up?” she asked.

He pointed at the ruins. “I’d like to take a look at those,” he said. “I find such places interesting.”

“There’s not much to see there,” she said. “It’s an abandoned Inuit summer village from a long time ago. They left when the waters near here were fished out by nonnatives.”

“Still,” he said. “I’d like to see it, if you don’t mind stopping.”

She shrugged. “You’re the client.” Turning her ATV in that direction, she set a somewhat slower pace toward the abandoned village. Jason followed in her wake, thinking about what it must be like for people to have to move their homes because others had destroyed their way of life.

Just as they reached the copse of trees that sheltered the buildings, Tina jammed on her brakes and abruptly turned around. Her eyes were wide. “No questions,” she snapped. “We’ve got to get out of here right now!”

Startled, Jason stopped his ATV completely. “Wha—” he began to ask, even as she motored by him, going as fast as she could, the trailer bouncing wildly behind her.

He turned to look at the buildings, wondering what could have possibly set her off like that, when he realized that there were several men coming out of the trees. Dressed in winter camouflage, they were heavily armed and already moving into position to open fire. “Not the friendliest natives,” he said, diving off the ATV to use it for cover as the first shots rang out.

Bullets dug up the turf near his ATV. Jason slipped off his goggles and put on the shooting glasses. Now was as good a time as any for a field test. He drew his Glock from beneath his coat, checked the load, then popped up over the seat of his vehicle, sighting on the closest man, who was running toward him.

Jason exhaled and fired. The lenses of his glasses simultaneously tracked the round and his visual response. The bullet took the man just below the collarbone and punched through the other side, shattering his shoulder blade. He screamed and fell to the ground, his blood staining the grass and the patchy snow a bright crimson.

“Four and a half inches high at twenty-nine feet,” he estimated, gauging the feedback that ran in a tiny font along the bottom of his lenses. “And slightly to the right.”

The other two men dived for cover of their own, one behind a log and another behind a small cluster of stones. Neither one seemed too interested in retrieving their bleeding friend, whose moans could be heard between the shots they were firing for cover.

They weren’t using military-grade weapons, he realized, but heavy-duty bolt-action hunting rifles. When they paused to reload, he risked another glance over the top of the ATV. One man had moved closer, crawling through the scrub grass. He’d drawn a revolver. He popped his head up every few feet to take another look. There wasn’t anything special about him that Jason could see. He looked quite a bit like a hunter who’d been caught poaching, but either way, he and his friends seemed serious about doing harm.

As the man low-crawled past his wounded comrade, he muttered, “Shut up, will you?”

The momentary distraction was all Jason needed. He slipped around the front tires, sighted and fired. This time, his aim was perfect—the round entered the man’s forehead one inch above his eyebrows and dead center. The force shoved him upright, his features straining with shock, and Jason fired again, aiming center mass and driving him backward into the ground, dead before he landed.

“That’s two for me and none for you,” he called out to the last man. “I advise you to throw down your weapons and come out where I can see you.”

There was a long pause, then, “You won’t shoot?”

Grinning to himself, Jason called, “No, I won’t shoot. Come on out.”

He watched as the man tossed a rifle to the ground, then stepped out from behind the cluster of rocks, his hands raised. His features were unremarkable—fair skin, blue eyes, a mop of sweaty brown hair.

Jason got to his feet and closed the space between them. Behind him, he could hear the sound of Tina’s ATV returning. She must have realized that he hadn’t followed or had been watching and figured out that the situation was under control.

“Who are you?” Jason barked at the man. “And why’d you try to shoot us?”

The man stepped closer. “No one you know,” he said. His hand was a blur as he reached for the handgun behind his back. Jason didn’t even blink, but dropped two rounds into the man’s chest, killing him instantly. He fell over backward, his scream of pain cut short as the last of the air left his lungs.

“Stupid fool,” Jason said to himself. He looked down at the wounded man on the ground and assessed his condition. He’d lost too much blood and was already fading into unconsciousness. They were too far from anywhere to save him. “Sorry,” he said, “but this is the best I can do for you.” He shot him once in the head, ending the man’s misery.

Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath and turned to see Tina staring at him, her eyes wide with outrage. “You…you just shot those men in cold blood!”

“What?” Jason asked, even as he loaded a fresh clip. “I did not!”

“You did! I saw you. The one man surrendered and the other was wounded and you just…you just killed them like it was nothing.”

Shaking his head, Jason moved to gather up their weapons. He tossed them in a pile between the three bodies. “The man who surrendered was going for a gun behind his back,” he explained. “Roll him over and take a look if you don’t believe me. As for the man on the ground…he was going to die, Tina. A slow and painful death. I killed him because we’re too far away from anywhere to do anything for him.”

“Right,” she said, her voice rising an octave. “So now you’re a doctor, too?” She stumped over to the second man and rolled him over, then gasped. The gun he’d been going for was on the ground beneath him. Then she turned to look at the last man he’d killed. The pool of blood that had spread from beneath his back was testament to how badly he’d been wounded.

Tina turned back to Jason and nodded. “All right,” she said, angry. “Fine, you were telling the truth. But where did you learn to fight like that? You killed three armed men and never even broke a sweat.”

“I grew up in a rough neighborhood,” Jason joked, then he turned serious when he saw that she wouldn’t accept a flip answer. “I’ve been in a lot of tight scrapes over the years—the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia to name a few. You either learn how to fight in places like that or you die. I learned how to shoot pretty well.”

Looking over the bodies once more, she shook her head. “That’s the understatement of the year, if I’ve ever heard one. Now what do we do?”

“Check them out. Look the place over, then move on with our journey,” he said.

“We’re not going to take them back?”

“To Nome?” he asked. “Why would we? We can let the local authorities know what’s happened when we reach a village. Someone must have a phone somewhere.”

She laughed. “No, there aren’t too many phones out here, but the village we’re going to stay in has shortwave radio.”

“That should work,” he said. “In the meantime, let’s see if we can figure out why these guys came out shooting. Even if they were poachers, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to attack us the way they did.” He turned to move toward the buildings and she followed along behind.

“I have a guess,” she said, her voice hesitant. “They were probably smugglers.”

“Drugs?” he asked.

“Guns,” she replied. “They move them from here and down into Canada, where someone else sells them cheap into the United States. I read an article about it in the paper.”

“People are running guns in Alaska?” he asked, surprised. “Seems like a hard way to go about it. There are easier ways to get things into the U.S. than trekking across the Alaskan tundra.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but think of it this way. Out here, what are the chances of running into anyone, let alone law enforcement? Out here, we’re mostly on our own. And there’s a whole lot of big empty between here, Canada and the U.S.”

“True enough,” he said.

They stopped in front of a dilapidated hut. The boot tracks on the ground were fresh and he followed them inside. Sure enough, there were several large crates. He opened the top one to find it filled to the brim with Russian AN-94 assault rifles and clips. They were brand-new.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “Why were those guys shooting at me with hunting rifles when they had these?”

Tina’s voice was equally quiet. “I don’t know, but I’ve heard rumors that people who cross the smugglers are usually found during the spring thaw. Maybe they didn’t have ammunition?”

Jason quickly opened the other crates. He found more rifles and clips, along with one set of the older-style LAW rockets used by the U.S. military forces until the late eighties or so. But no ammunition. “You’re right,” he said. “No ammo. Just the weapons and the rockets. I suppose I should be glad they weren’t able to use one of these on me.”

“Yes,” she said, “you should. Can we go now? I want to get out of here in case someone comes looking for them. This could be where they were dropping them.”

He looked around the ancient building once more, then shook his head. “It’s an inconvenient spot for a drop point, but you’re right. We need to keep moving. How far is the coast from here?”

“Not far,” she said. “Maybe three or four miles.”

“Okay,” he said. “Go get one of the ATVs and I’ll get to work.”

“Work?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”

“Trust me,” he said, turning away to begin resealing the crates.

She sighed and stomped out of the room. Not long after, he heard the sound of her pulling up on one of the machines. The engine cut out and he called to her, “Come in and lend me a hand.”

Tina came back into the building. “Now what?”

“Now we load the crates onto the trailers and haul this stuff to the coast.”

“Are you crazy?” she half yelled. “You’re going to steal from the smugglers?”

“No,” he said, “I’m going to return their merchandise. The rifles are Russian. The rocket launchers are probably black market, sold out of Vietnam or somewhere else in Southeast Asia. It’s only fair that I put them back into the sea, where they can make their way home.”

“Let’s just go,” she said. “Let the authorities deal with it.”

“Help me or not,” he said, his voice turning cold. “If this is a drop point, then these weapons will eventually wind up in the United States and that puts a lot of people at risk. I won’t allow that to happen.”

For a long moment, it looked as if she was going to argue, ask questions or put up a fight, but then she sighed and kept whatever was on her mind to herself. Jason suspected he’d be hearing more about it later.

Without another word, she moved to the end of one of the crates and together, they quickly loaded the trailer. Once all the crates had been loaded, he checked the other buildings to make sure there wasn’t anything else left behind.

“All right,” he said. “Now, I want you to drive that machine down to the coast and wait for me there. Just give me a bearing. I’m going to make sure our dead friends here aren’t left out for scavengers.”

She shuddered dramatically. “I’d rather not know. Just head due east for two miles, then bear north. You’ll find the coast without a problem. I’ll look for you.”

“Good enough,” he said. “Now get going. We don’t have much light left and I want to find shelter before dark.”

She nodded once, then left. Jason got to work, dragging the bodies into the abandoned Inuit building and covering them as best he could. The door was long since gone, but with the cold and their winter gear, they might not give off a scent that would attract predators—at least for a little while. Once he was done with that, he returned to his own ATV and headed for the coast.

His mind worked at the situation rapidly. Obviously, Tina knew more about the smuggling going on in the area than she’d read in some newspaper article. Just as obvious was the fact that if these smugglers could get large crates of weapons into this area from Russia, they’d have no problem at all importing other weapons, too. Like bombs.

If a terrorist group decided to infiltrate using this method, there’d be little to no chance of knowing it before it was too late. His mission parameters had suddenly expanded. Now he had to find the sub…and also figure out a way to stop the smuggling operation. He’d have to get word to Denny about what he’d discovered as soon as possible.

Tina had said there were no phones up here, but Jason had a satellite phone and other advanced communications equipment in his gear. At the first opportunity, he’d check in with Denny and Room 59 and find out what they wanted him to do. Surely they would recognize the additional threat and move to put a stop to it.

He clocked the distance and it wasn’t long until he found the tracks from Tina’s vehicle. There was no way to wipe them out…and if the smugglers wanted vengeance, it was only a matter of time until they found out which direction they’d gone. He could be in for the fight of his life.

What was he truly fighting for? he suddenly wondered.

He shook his head, plagued again by questions that he’d never seriously considered before. None of these questions mattered. Not right now. Right now, he had a mission to accomplish. Everything else was secondary to that.

In the far distance, he saw Tina waving her arms at him. They had a long way to go before they’d reach the village she’d shown him on the map, and already the evening darkness was closing in.