Killer Summer

60

Roger McGuiness, lathered in sweat from having spent the past hour cutting pine boughs to disguise the Learjet, delivered Cantell’s satellite phone to the lodge’s living room.

“It rang, but I didn’t answer it,” McGuiness said.

Cantell stared at the bulky phone. He’d left it behind on the jet, having seen lights on in the lodge while landing and wanting to have an excuse, if necessary, to get inside the lodge. He’d been expecting a call from Lorraine to tell him she’d arrived at the remote Nevada strip, but to his surprise the caller ID showed a different number.

He knew who it was and was thinking about when to call back as the phone rang in his hand. With McGuiness and Salvo watching, he hit the POWER button and shut the phone off.

“I’ll deal with that later,” he said.

“What now?” McGuiness asked, mopping his face with his shirt sleeve. “FYI, we’re maybe eighty or ninety miles from Hailey. We flew damn-near directly over Stanley, so we’ve got to assume we were spotted. A jet flaming out is a pretty spectacular sight, so we’re made.”

“What’s the plan?” Salvo said anxiously. “We’re out of here, right? You said the idea was to get away from the plane. ‘Radioactive’: isn’t that what you called it? All we need are the GPS coordinates to find it, right? Let’s not forget we were going to be a hundred miles away from here before we even made our demands, right?”

McGuiness feigned disinterest by flipping through a pamphlet.

“And we will be,” Cantell said. “The schedule is changed but not the plan.”

He lifted a framed topographical map from the wall and laid it on the coffee table in front of the oversized stone fireplace. The map covered an area of roughly fifty square miles, a red star stuck on the lower half of the glass next to a light blue line designating a river.

“We’re not flying,” Cantell said. “And the cowboy told me that if we float the river, it’s four days minimum”-he pointed to the map and shook his head-“mostly in a very long canyon through very steep terrain. After the first day, there are a few dry tributaries, but if you hike any of them you’re looking at thirty to fifty miles of total wilderness without trails, which would take longer than floating out on the river. And if we do that, we’re sitting ducks: they’ll be waiting for us.”

“So we’re screwed…” Salvo said.

“No, we need to be resourceful,” Cantell said. “Behind this cabin is Shady Mountain, part of the river canyon’s walls. It surrounds this part of the ranch, sealing it off from unwanted hikers, the Grape-Nuts crowd. Now, there’s rock-climbing gear in the garage, and my guess is, there’s a route set in the face of the mountain. If it’s there, it should be easy to see in daylight. But first things first: we need the girl. We need to find her fast. Then we put Sam Elliott and Shia LaBeouf in one of the rafts and send them downstream.”

“But-”

“They’re the biggest threat to us, Matt. We eliminate the threat by getting rid of them. We have to close the deal. We’re going to need time to do it. Once they’re on the river, we’ve got four days-”

“Unless,” Salvo interrupted, “they run into somebody on the river who has a phone-”

“Trips on this river are strictly controlled,” McGuiness broke in, holding up a dog-eared Forest Service pamphlet from the coffee table. “They’re not to spoil, and I’m quoting here, ‘the natural sights and sounds that campers deserve in a remote-wilderness experience. ’ In other words, this is no Disneyland.” He pointed to sites on the map. “We’re just about halfway between these two camps, a full day’s journey. If we put those two on the river about sunrise, they’re not ru

“Screw that, it’s too risky. We should just lock them up here.”

“Good plan, Matt. Just let them dehydrate and die. Or maybe we should give them the run of the kitchen. The cowboy is our number one threat. He knows this place, the woods. He knows what our options are. We need him gone. But, last I checked, we’re not in the business of killing people.”

“Tell that to the wine currier,” Salvo protested.

“All the more reason to get out of here. Think about it, Matt: who turned on the gas valve?”

That silenced Salvo.

“The girl?” McGuiness said, usually the silent one. Cantell noted this change.

“We tell the insurance company they have to pay up. We tell them that without payment in full, the jet will blow with the girl in it.”

“No way!” McGuiness shouted.

“Hang on, relax. She’s with us the whole time, not on the jet. But we need to give them an incentive to speed things up because we don’t know how long we’ve got.”

“But if the two somehow manage to make that call…” Salvo protested.

“We have the girl,” Cantell repeated. “Let them find the jet.”

That silenced Salvo and McGuiness both.

“Once we’ve rendezvoused with Lorraine at a new location we’re free and clear. We leave the girl behind. No harm, no foul.”

“But the beauty of the original plan,” McGuiness said, “was that we weren’t going to call the company until we were long gone. If they didn’t pay up, then we wouldn’t give them the coordinates and there’d be no way for them to find the plane. We could then go back four months later and fly the thing out of there, sell it in South America. That was our backup. All of that’s gone now. We’re not exactly in the Nevada desert, and no one’s flying that jet anywhere, probably ever. So if we’re going to play the girl card, why not start there?”

“I’m open for suggestions,” Cantell said, throwing his arms out.

He searched the faces of the other two. Salvo appeared to be brooding. McGuiness reeked of impatience.

McGuiness said, “What if we can’t find the girl?”

“We’ll find her. If necessary, we use the boy in her place.”

“We don’t take hostages,” McGuiness said. “We don’t kill people.”

“We broke one of those rules already,” Cantell said. He looked directly at Salvo. He wanted the man motivated. “It’s a work in progress.”

“We could put all three of them in the raft,” McGuiness suggested.

“We could,” Cantell said. “But I’m voting to bring her along as insurance, and, given her age and looks, how do you think Matt’s going to vote?”

Salvo gri

“You disgust me,” McGuiness said.

“Like I should care,” Salvo fired back.

Cantell stepped in. “Girls!” He could ill afford such dissension. “We’ll make a lot of noise like we’re going off to look for her, then one of us stays here while the other two keep an eye on the jet. Temperature’s dropping fast out there,” he added. “She’s not ready for that. She won’t last an hour.”