with Ellen and they’ll be out of this nightmare place for good.
The baby is silent. She looks down at her. Wide-eyed and contented. Sucking her thumb.
“You’re all right. You’ll do, kid.”
She sits in an unaccustomed quiet, engine idling, stick in gear, clutch to the floor. The airplane drops closer. I love you, Charlie.
The airplane is on its invisible ramp now, lined up with the opposite end of the field, coming in straight toward her. Half a minute to touchdown.
And then two things:
The Bronco comes slashing out of the trees up there alongside the far end of the runway-
And the helicopter swoops into view low across the treetops. It dips and sways out over the middle of the airstrip-hovering. Beneath the rotor she sees grass whipping flat against the steel mesh.
Her heart leaps to her throat.
They’re going to block the runway …
No. Wait.
The helicopter is climbing-rising straight up as if on an elevator-and the Bronco has turned alongside the runway; it’s coming down the side of the field toward her but the runway itself is clear.
God knows why but they’ve made room.
Maybe they’re just stupid.
Who cares. You can make it, Charlie. Come straight in and pick me up and somehow we’ll get out of here. I’ve still got the damn gun if we need it …
The thing went caroming all over the inside of the Jeep back there-a wonder it didn’t go off-but now it’s in plain sight on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She reaches down and picks it up.
When she looks up again she sees the airplane climbing away, steeply banking.
The helicopter is scooting around up there-its movements don’t seem to make much sense. The Bronco has halved the distance to her Jeep and if she doesn’t move now they’ll have her but Jesus Christ, Charlie, what are you doing to me?
Running. Climbing. Turning back the way he came.
Receding into the sky.
The helicopter goes after him now, following him toward the clouds.
Oh Charlie you good-for-nothing bastard. You betraying son of a bitch.
She stomps the accelerator and pops the clutch and the baby cries out when the Jeep lurches into motion.
Hauling the wheel around one-handed she sends it off the field. Slams into the trees-downhill into raw wilderness smashing through brush, skidding past tree trunks, knocking down saplings, bursting into a daisy- flowered meadow, sliding half sideways down the steep slope.
God please help me.
56
In a frantic lunge against despair she rams the Jeep forward, seeking openings among the trees; the wheel chatters in her hand and she’s clutching the baby protectively in her arm and both limbs are cramped but she can’t let up. No telling how close they may be behind her and it won’t be long before they catch up because she’s breaking the trail for them. Got to find a way off this mountain …
The baby is yelling again.
She’s trying desperately to think of a way out. Trying to remember the map but nothing comes to mind. Never been over here on the back side. Nothing here to see except woods all around.
She finds clearings and uses them-several times plunging into thick mud bogs before knowing they are there in the deep grass; only the low range four-wheel traction brings her through.
Smashing thickets she skirts a brown pond and fits between saplings as thick as her forearms; the side- mounted spare tire catches on one of them and begins to pull the Jeep around but she manhandles it through.
Ellen in panic tries to scramble out of her imprisoning grip. She has to let go of the wheel to confine the baby with both hands. A tire bangs against something and pulls to the side; she has to grab the wheel again; she tucks Ellen against her, lowers her chin, lifts the baby and pushes her mouth against Ellen’s forehead. “Okay-okay- okay.”
The tires jitter across a rocky patch, making a loud rataplan that jars all her bones; the frame of the windshield shakes so violently before her eyes that she feels caught up in a kaleidoscopic maelstrom.
“Hang on, baby girl. Yell all you want but just don’t let go.”
Then in a stand of pines she crosses a trail and nearly misses it but then it registers and she brakes to a slamming stop, fights the shift into reverse and backs up.
It’s an overgrown track that looks like the sort of road forest rangers use-not much more than a hiking trail but wide enough to admit vehicular passage.
It goes uphill to the left, downhill to the right. That’s south, more or less, and she goes that way even though she knows her best escape is northward; she goes that way because it’s downhill and maybe it will lead her out of the mountains.
The track carries the Jeep out of the trees at the edge of a sloping meadow and the world opens before her. Worn green mountains all around; all the hillsides spill into a narrow valley that curves away to the northeast.
She can see cleared building sites down there-half a dozen scattered summer houses.
Where there are cabins there must be a road.
While she considers her options she hears a drone of distant engines and she sees them above the range quite some distance away to the north-a ballet of two tiny craft dark against the grey white clouds: airplane and helicopter weaving and bobbing and swaying as if performing some strange ritual dance.
The damn helicopter is still chasing Charlie.
To hell with him.
She continues down the track-hurrying, slithering on the weeds. Branches and thorns reach out to scrape and scratch the Jeep as it comes juddering by.
The ride is less brutal on this downslope. The baby’s panic subsides; crying softly now. Keep talking to her. Keep reassuring her.
She’s doing about twenty miles an hour-not very fast by normal standards but any faster and she wouldn’t be able to stop in time to avoid the sudden rocks and holes that appear at intervals; she has to find a way around each of them-or bull right over it, mechanism gnashing.
Toward the bottom the slope grows steeper. The path begins to switchback. Hairpin turns-she has to back and fill. For a few hundred yards she runs back and forth along a descending Z-shaped series of terraces. Stopping and crushing the stick into reverse for the last turn she looks out the window up the long hill she’s just descended- and sees the Bronco bouncing its way down from the top.
Bastards. Bastards.
They’re not far behind-a couple of minutes, no more. She blasts out of the hairpin and goes lurching across the valley floor, following the faint track and hoping it will take her out to a road near those houses on the opposite slope.
“A kiss for my little one. Quiet now, Ellen. Stop blubbering, that’s a good girl. I know you’re scared and hungry and thirsty and exhausted-you’ve got a whole world of things to complain about-but Momma’s got to think. You’re just going to have to bear with me. I’ll apologize later.”
Thing is, as soon as we get out onto a decent road we’re going to want all the speed we can get. That means shifting the controls on this beast-taking it out of four-wheel and low range. Converting it back to a road car. Now we’ve got to try and remember how to do that because they’re not going to give us a whole lot of time to read the damn manual and work it out by trial and error.…
There’s a hedgerow ahead, maples and oaks and birches-big trees masking whatever lies beyond. Directly
