Winterkill

A hot, white veil of rage covered Joe’s eyes, and it was all he could do to keep from launching himself into the cab. He sucked in a deep gulp of cold air and falling snow, forcing himself to stay in control of his actions. When he looked up, Barnum was eyeing him, as if waiting to see what Joe would do next. Panic flooded Joe as he looked into the cab and saw that Melinda Strickland was clutching the radio tightly to her chest. There was no way he was going to get it back without breaking her fingers.

Joe turned to Barnum.

“She’s no hostage, for God’s sake. Mrs. Cobb and her husband have been in contact with these Sovereigns since the beginning. They’re all part of the black-helicopter crowd. It makes sense when you think about it.”

Barnum raised his eyebrows and shrugged in a “Who knows?” gesture.

“Barnum, you need to call your deputies off,” Joe said, glaring at Barnum’s passive face. “Pull them off and they can’t continue the raid.”

“Hell, Joe, I don’t even know which ones are mine and which ones ain’t,” Barnum said, staring back. “They all look alike to me out here.”

Joe was too surprised to move for a moment.

“Besides,” Barnum said, reaching for the handle of the door, “It’ll be interesting to see how this thing plays out.”

Barnum slammed the door shut before Joe could stop him and he heard the lock click. He couldn’t fathom what was happening. He stood outside the cab of the Sno-Cat, furious, and depressingly alone.

THINK.

Joe was beside himself. No matter what he did, it wasn’t enough. He had never been in a situation that seemed so . . . inevitable.

A sudden scratch of static ruptured the silence that had reclaimed the scene after Joe’s outburst. Joe could hear the radio clearly through an open window in the Sno-Cat that had been cracked an inch to prevent the glass from steaming up inside.

“I can see Wade Brockius through the window of a trailer,” Munker reported over the radio. “He’s pacing.”

“Can you see the hostage?” Strickland asked.

“Not for the last few minutes.”

“If you took him out, could we rush the trailer and save her?”

“No. There are too many damned Sovereigns hidden in the trees.”

Joe couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had been slumped against the outside of the command Sno-Cat, but he now stood up. He rubbed his face hard. He didn’t know the procedure for a hostage situation—they didn’t teach that to game wardens—but he knew this wasn’t it. This was madness.

He reached into his suit and found his compact binoculars. Moving away from the Sno-Cat, he scanned the compound. The nose of Brockius’s trailer faced the road. Through the thin curtains, he could see Brockius just as Munker had described.

Then he saw someone else.

Jeannie Keeley was now at the window, pulling the curtain aside to look out. Her face looked tense, and angry. Beneath her chin was another, smaller, paler face. April.

“Fire a warning shot,” Melinda Strickland told Munker.

“A warning shot?” Joe screamed. “What are you . . .”

Before Joe could react, he saw a movement in the ditch behind a knot of brush. The slim black barrel of a rifle slid out of blinding whiteness and swung slowly toward the trailer window. Joe screamed “NO!” as he involuntarily launched himself from the cover of the vehicles in the direction of the shooter. As he ran, he watched in absolute horror as the barrel stopped on a target and fired. The shot boomed across the mountain, jarring the dreamlike snowy morning violently awake.

Immediately after the shot, Joe realized what he had just done, how he had exposed himself completely in the open road with the assault team behind him and the hidden Sovereigns somewhere in front. Maybe the Sovereigns were as shocked as he was, he thought, since no one had fired back.

But within the hush of the snowfall and the faint returning echo of the shot, there was a high-pitched hiss. It took a moment for Joe to focus on the sound, and when he did, he realized that its origin was a newly severed pipe that had run between a large propane tank on the side of the trailer and the trailer itself. The thin copper tubing rose from the snow and bent toward the trailer like a rattlesnake ready to strike. He could clearly see an open space between the broken tip of the tubing and the fitting on the side of the trailer where the pipe should have been attached. High-pressure gas was shooting into the side vents of the trailer.

No! Joe thought. Munker couldn’t have . . .

He looked up to see a flurry of movement behind the curtains inside the trailer a split-second before there was a sudden, sickening WHUMP that seemed to suck all the air off the mountain. The explosion came from inside the trailer, blowing out the window glass and instantly crushing two tires so the trailer rocked and heaved to one side like a wounded animal. The hissing gas from the severed pipe was now on fire, and it became a furious gout of flame aimed at the thin metal skin of the trailer.

Suddenly, a burning figure ran from the trailer, its gyrations framed by fire, and crumpled into the snow.

Joe stood transfixed, staring at the window where he had last seen April. It was now a blazing hole.

He did not move as the shouting started from both the compound in front of him and the assault team behind him, as Sovereigns who had been hiding behind trees and under the snow screamed curses, as several of them fired back, the rounds smashing through the windows or pinging against the thin metal skins of the Sno-Cats. He heard the sharp snap of bullets through the air around him.

The propane tanks near the burning trailer now flared and exploded, launching rolling orange fireballs veined with black smoke into the air. The trailer burned furiously, the wall consumed so fast that the black metal skeleton of the frame was already showing.