CHAPTER forty-eight.
Bonson felt a huge blast of utter, scalding frustration shudder through him. Agh! Ugh! Umf! This is where your major strokes came from: some little fritz in the brain and, in the blink of an eye, you're fried. His blood pressure felt dangerously high. He wished he had somebody to smack or kill. His muscles tightened into brick, redness flashed in his mind. His teeth ground against one another.
He spoke again into the microphone.
'Bob One, Bob One, this is Bob Control, come in, come in, goddammit, come in!'
'He isn't there, sir,' said the tech sergeant, who was in the radio bay with him.
'We've lost him.'
Or the fucking cowboy's on his own, Bonson thought.
'Okay, switch me through to the larger net.'
The sergeant dialed the new frequency on the console of the radio.
'Ah, Hill, this is Bonson, are you there?'
'Yes, sir,' spoke his second in command from Mountain Home Air Force Base.
'The whole team is in. We're in good shape.'
'You've liaised with the state police?'
'Yes, sir. I have a Major Hendrikson on standby.'
'Okay, here's the deal. We've lost contact with our asset. Tell this major to get state police helicopters in there as soon as possible. Sooner, if possible.'
'Yes, sir, but the word I'm getting is that nobody's flying into those mountains until at least ten a.m. There's still real bad weather. And these guys are spread pretty thin.'
'Shit.'
'I did talk to Air Force. We can get some low-level radars set up on three surrounding mountains by 1200, assuming they can move in by 1000, and we can get good position on any incoming helos. If this Russian plans to exit by helo, we'll nab him.'
'This guy's the best in the world at escape and evasion.
He's worked mountains before. Swagger knew that.
If Swagger doesn't get him, he's gone. It's that simple.'
The man on the other end was silent.
'Goddamn, I hate to be beat by him! I hate it,' said Bonson to nobody in particular. He ripped off his earphones and threw them against the fuselage of the plane, the plastic on one of them cracked and a piece spun off and landed at his feet. He stomped it into the floor, grunting mightily.
The sergeant happened to look away at precisely that moment, as the navigator came back to get some coffee from the thermos in the radio bay, and the two aviators locked eyes. The sergeant rolled his eyes, pointed his finger at his head and rotated it quickly, communicating in the universal language of human gesture a single idea: screwball.
The navigator nodded.
Julie knew at once it was a shot. The supersonic crack was sharp and trailed a wake of echo as it bounced off the sheltering hills.
'Nikki! Get in here! Now!' she screamed.
The little girl turned, paused in confusion, and then there was another one, like the snap of a whip, and Nikki ran toward her. Both recognized it from the time they'd been shot at so recently.
'Come on, come on!' yelled Julie, and she grabbed her daughter, pulled her into the house, locked the door.
She heard another shot, from a different location, an answering shot.
Men were trying to kill each other nearby.
'Get downstairs,' she said to her daughter.
'Now!
And don't come up, no matter what, until you hear the police.'
The girl ran into the cellar. Julie grabbed a phone, and found at once there was no dial tone. It was dead.
She looked outside and could see nothing except the hugeness of the snow, now lightening as full dawn approached.
She heard no more shots.
She ran upstairs, and found Sally groggily wandering down the hall.
'Did you--?'
'Someone's shooting,' Julie yelled.
'Jesus,' Sally said.
'Did you call the police?'
