cigarette Marais had given him, nor campfire smoke, as he would have expected in that place. Another smell, faint and so different from a campfire that it was like an alarm. Cigar smoke. He reacted quickly, tilting the weight of the canoe onto his left hand, freeing his right hand to reach back to his pack, groping for the. 38. At the same moment, he heard Sloane grunt behind him and Louis let out a squawk.
Cork heaved the canoe off his shoulders to the side of the trail. He spun and saw that Stormy had done the same. Behind them, beyond Arkansas Willie Raye, who still carried his canoe, they saw Sloane down, flailing his arms and legs like a beetle on its back. A few feet beyond him, Louis hung like a puppy in the grip of a giant dressed in military camouflage. The man stood at least six and a half feet tall, weighing a good two hundred and seventy pounds, all of it lean. His head had been shaved like Mr. Clean, and like most men with shaved heads, his ears seemed too large. His free hand held a pistol-a. 45 Colt military issue, Cork figured. Mr. Clean was grinning around the last two inches of a lit cigar.
“Put all the canoes down,” he ordered. “Let me see your faces.”
Willie Raye complied, carefully unburdened himself of the canoe, and turned to the man.
“That’s good,” Mr. Clean said. He set Louis down, but he kept the muzzle of his gun against the back of the boy’s head.
“Help me up.” Sloane held out a hand to Willie Raye. When he was back on his feet, he glared at Mr. Clean. “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter who I am. And as for what I want, well, I’ve got that.”
The woman, Cork thought. Shit. His. 38 was in his pack, on top, just under the flap. He’d put it there-a mistake, he now knew-because he hadn’t brought his holster and had no easy way to carry it and had convinced himself that this kind of ambush wouldn’t happen until they’d located Shiloh. Now there was no way he could get to it before Mr. Clean put a bullet through Louis, and probably the rest of them as well.
“Louis?” Sloane asked, confused.
Mr. Clean rolled his eyes. “Shiloh, you dumb fuck.”
“Who sent you?”
“Jesus. You guys. I swear, after I kill you, you’ll be grilling Satan about whether he’s got a license for his fucking pitchfork.”
“You hurt my son, I’ll rip you apart,” Stormy said.
“You make a move in this direction, Chief, and I’ll blow his head off. Then yours.”
Between Cork and Mr. Clean stood Stormy, Raye, Sloane, and Louis. Cork thought desperately that if he could get behind them for just a moment, out of sight, he might be able to reach into his pack for the . 38. He began to ease himself behind Stormy.
“Hey, burger man. Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Just going to drop my pack, that’s all. Getting heavy.”
“Won’t be heavy much longer.” Mr. Clean grinned.
“What do you want with the woman?” Sloane asked.
“Business. This is all just business.” Mr. Clean shrugged off a rifle that had been slung over his shoulder and set it against a stump at the edge of the trail.
“That rifle,” Sloane said. “You got that rifle from Grimes. It was you.”
“No shit, Sherlock. First time I ever killed a man with an ax. I kind of liked it.”
“How’d you track us?” Cork asked. He was interested, but mostly he wanted to keep the man talking while he tried to figure something that might stop what he knew was about to happen.
“Training, burger man. It’s all in what you learn.”
“Where’s Shiloh?” Raye asked.
“Right where we want her.” Mr. Clean grew suddenly sober. “I think we’ve talked enough.”
Cork knew that was it. No matter what they did, they couldn’t sidestep it. He felt responsible. He felt sorry for young Louis.
Then the boy’s eyes shifted toward the woods. At the edge of his own vision, Cork saw what had drawn Louis’s attention. A blur of gray.
Mr. Clean saw it, too. Startled, he swung his weapon in that direction for an instant. Sloane leaped on the opportunity, grabbed the boy, and shoved him back into the arms of Willie Raye. He put himself squarely between Mr. Clean and the others. The barrel leveled on him; the next shot sent him staggering back. He fell in a heap, rolled over, and lay still, wedged between the big packs strapped front and back on him. Sloane’s sacrifice gave Stormy just enough time to catapult himself at the giant in camouflage fatigues. Stormy wrapped his powerful lumberjack’s hands around the wrist of the huge arm that held the gun and forced it skyward. Another round exploded from the Colt and tunneled into the low clouds above them. Stormy was more than a head shorter and a good seventy pounds lighter than the other man, but the force of his body and the added weight of the pack propelled them both backward. For a moment, it looked as if Stormy had him. Then Mr. Clean delivered a deft knife-hand strike to Stormy’s neck, a powerfully calculated blow that buckled Two Knives.
Cork was there to take his place. A running head butt threw the big man back a couple of steps so that he stumbled over the top of a big gray rock slab jutting from the ground. Cork leaped on him. He drew back for a right cross to the big man’s jaw, but the pack on his back slowed him. Mr. Clean hit first. The blow caught Cork just behind the ear, boomed into him hard as a cannonball. Cork tumbled off. He tried to stand, but the toe of a boot caught him brutally in the diaphragm and knocked the breath right out of him.
Gasping for air, he saw Stormy fly at Mr. Clean again. Stormy grasped the big man from behind in a powerful bear hug and lifted him off the ground. He was about to do a body slam when Mr. Clean’s arm shot back, hard as the piston on a steam engine, and his elbow rammed Stormy’s nose. Stunned and bleeding, Stormy struggled to hold on, but Mr. Clean broke loose. He delivered a kick to Stormy’s solar plexus that lifted Stormy off his feet.
Cork staggered up, too slowly. Mr. Clean had Stormy’s head pulled back, throat exposed. In his right hand he brandished a large hunting knife.
“Time to fucking end this,” he growled. His hand flicked toward Stormy’s throat.
The blade never touched Stormy. Three shots popped in quick succession. The camouflage jacket Mr. Clean wore exploded in a spray of fabric and blood. The man folded like an empty flour sack.
In the profound quiet of the moment after, in the moment when there was nothing he could do but catch his breath, Cork heard the splash and tumble of the Little Moose just out of sight, the small whimper of Louis still caught up in Willie Raye’s arms, the gasp of the man on the ground as he curled around his pain, and the disbelieving whisper of Sloane, who’d managed to shuck his packs and stood frozen with the gun in his hand. “Jesus. Sweet Jesus.”
Stormy drew himself up. Louis ran to him and threw his arms around his father. Stormy wrapped his boy in a hug. Blood ran in a thick stream from his nose and reddened his upper teeth. He looked at Sloane, and said, “Thanks.”
Sloane wobbled, then sat down hard and sudden.
Cork moved to him as quickly as his own hurting body would let him. “Are you hit?”
“I don’t know.” Sloane stared down at his chest, then put a hand under his coat and felt around. “No blood.” He looked at Cork, his face an ashen color.
“How could that be?”
Arkansas Willie Raye knelt at the packs Sloane had carried. “Are you a religious man?”
“Why?”
“Cuz lookee here.” Raye reached into a pack that had a bullet hole through it dead center. He hauled out the shattered pieces of a heavy cast-iron skillet and a sack that leaked flour from what looked like a big worm hole bored in one side. Raye stuck a couple of fingers into the hole, fished around, and brought out a flattened slug.
“Something-” Sloane looked toward the woods.
“Something drew his fire.”
Louis turned in his father’s arms. “Ma’iingan.”
“Wolf?” Sloane asked.
“I saw it, too,” Cork said.
A sound leaked from the man on the ground. Not words, but an attempt maybe. He rolled to his back and held his side. His hands were bloody as butchered meat.
“Stormy, take Louis down the trail,” Cork said.
