Paul and Sam had expected to find armed guards rather than animals at the edge of the woods that surrounded the mill, but there were none. Although all of the lights were on in the main building, the structure seemed — as did the land around it — deserted.
They circled through the woods. Eventually they came to the employee parking lot and studied the scene from behind a thick clump of laurel.
The helicopter was there, on the macadam, thirty feet away. A man stood beside it in the darkness, smoking a cigarette, watching the lightning and the fast-moving clouds.
Paul whispered: “Dawson or Klinger?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said.
“Neither do I. ”
“Then he’s the pilot.”
“You see a gun?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Move in now?”
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“The right moment.”
They watched.
A few seconds later the pilot dropped his cigarette and crushed it under the sole of his shoe. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk aimlessly about, just killing time. At first he came toward the trees, wandered within ten or twelve feet of them, then turned and went back the way he’d come.
“Quickly,” Sam said.
Paul stood up. He eased through the laurel and ran after the pilot.
The man heard him and turned. His face was a black mask, but his eyes seemed phosphorescent. “Who —”
“I am the key,” Paul said.
“I am the lock. ”
“Speak softly.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paul looked beyond the helicopter. He could see the windows — most of them with light behind them — on the second and third floors of the main building at the end of the storage yard. If he could see the windows, anyone who happened to glance out might be able to see him, in turn, despite the darkness. He hustled the pilot closer to the helicopter, where they were pretty much hidden from the main building.
Sam joined them and said, “What’s your name?”
“Malcolm Spencer.”
“You are the pilot?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Where’s Leonard Dawson?”
“In the mill,” Spencer said.
“Which building?”
“The biggest one.”
“Which floor? First, second, or third?”
“First floor. There’s a sort of public sales area with—”
“And Ernst Klinger,” Sam said. “Where’s he?”
“He’s in Black River,” Spencer said.
“That can’t be right.”
“Sir?”
“You mean he’s in
“That’s right.”
Paul and Sam glanced at each other.
“Something wrong?” the pilot asked. He seemed to be concerned about them.
“You’re lying,” Paul said.
Surprised, Spencer said, “No, sir.”
“I am the key,” Paul said.
“I am the lock,” Spencer said.
“Where’s Klinger?”
“He’s in Black River.”
Paul stared at Sam. “Christ!”
To the pilot, Sam said, “You took Klinger and Dawson to the logging camp, didn’t you? And then brought them to the mill?”
“No. Just Mr. Dawson. General Klinger went to town from the camp.”
“When?”
“A couple of minutes after we got there,” Spencer said. He smiled uncertainly. His teeth seemed even more radiant than his eyes.
“How did he go? Not in the chopper?”
“No, sir. He took a car.”
“Why—”
Before he could get out more than one word of the question, Sam screamed and stumbled forward against the helicopter.
In the same instant, the night silence was split open by a single rifle shot.
Instinctively, Paul dropped to the ground and rolled.
A bullet cracked into the pavement where he’d just been, ricocheted into the darkness.
A second bullet smashed the macadam on the other side of him, bracketing him.
He rolled onto his back and sat up. He saw the rifleman at once: down on one knee in a sportsman’s pose, thirty feet away at the edge of the woods. On the drive from town, Paul had reloaded the Combat Magnum; now he held it with both hands and squeezed off five quick shots.
All of them missed the mark.
However, the sharp barking of the revolver and the deadly whine of all those bullets skipping across the pavement apparently unnerved the man with the rifle. Instead of trying to finish what he had begun, he stood and ran.
Paul scrambled to his feet, took a few steps after him and fired once more.
Untouched, the rifleman headed away in a big loop that would take him back to the mill complex.
“Sam?”
“Here.”
He could barely see Sam — dark clothes against the macadam — and was thankful for the older man’s telltale white hair and beard. “You were hit.”
“In the leg.”
Paul started toward him. “How bad?”
“Flesh wound,” Sam said. “That was Dawson. Get after him, for God’s sake.”
“But if you’re hurt—”
“I’ll be fine. Malcolm can make a tourniquet. Now get after him, dammit!”
Paul ran. At the end of the parking area he passed the rifle: it was on the ground; Dawson had either dropped it by accident and had been too frightened to stop and retrieve it — or he had discarded it in panic. Still running, Paul fished in his pocket with one hand for the extra bullets he was carrying.
The wooden tower stairs creaked under Klinger’s weight. He paused and counted slowly to thirty before going up three more steps and pausing again. If he climbed too fast, the woman and the girl would know that he was coming. And if they were ready and waiting for him — well, he would be committing suicide when he walked onto the belfry platform. He hoped that, by waiting for thirty seconds or as much as a minute between brief
