Killer View

Introductions were made. Steam poured from Walt’s clothing. The two eyed him apprehensively; he sensed reluctance in them that he didn’t understand.

Riding a snowmobile would chill him down quickly, so he took a moment to strip down to his bare chest and change into a fresh Capilene undershirt. He redressed in his uniform shirt and zipped up his jacket, shifting on his feet to get his body heat back. The conversation never stopped as he caught up the Challis sheriff, a man with whom he’d had a major falling-out over the killing of a wolf a year earlier. There was no love lost between them, and he thought that that explained their mutual reluctance.

The Challis sheriff established that they’d crossed no fresh snowmobile tracks. “This guy’s headed back the way he came.”

“But what’s out there?” Walt inquired.

“Not much. Not for a long ways, anyway,” said the sheriff.

“Sunbeam or Clayton, I suppose,” the deputy said with a bit of a twang. His face barely showed out of the tightened hood and ski goggles. “Nothing else between here and there but a shitload of snow.”

“And your odd summer ranch on grandfathered parcels,” the sheriff added. “Would be a hell of a lot faster to head back to town and drive down to Clayton than punching through on Yankee Fork Road.”

“But the only sure way to know where he’s going is to follow the snowmobile track,” Walt said.

“Can’t argue with that,” the sheriff said. “I’m just saying there ain’t many places a fella can meet up with Highway Seventy-five, and Clayton’s the most likely of ’em.”

“But not the only one,” Walt said.

“I think we established that,” the sheriff said indignantly.

“You mind if I borrow one of your machines?” Walt asked. “I’ll follow on the trail while you get your guys down to Clayton. It wouldn’t hurt to roadblock Seventy-five at the turn to May.”

“Radios won’t do shit in there. You’ve got maybe a mile of coverage. Nothing more.”

Walt tapped his pack. “Satellite phone,” he said, raising a snarl in his counterpart. The Challis sheriff’s office wasn’t at the forefront of technology. “My deputy has the number.”

“You sure you want to do Yankee Fork Road?” the deputy asked one final time. “There ain’t nothing out there for thirty miles, Sheriff.”

Walt saw red. He didn’t like his decisions being questioned. He’d had that a lot over the past six months. People had expected him to fire Tommy Brandon. Myra had expected him to dump Gail’s clothes out the front door.

Minutes later, he found himself riding the snowmobile at forty miles an hour, following in the tread impressions that played out before him. It wasn’t until he caught a glimpse of himself in the snowmobile’s vibrating rearview mirror that he understood the reluctance he’d seen on their faces: mucus from his nose had frozen in twin lines on his upper lip; his eyebrows were white with frost, as were his eyelashes and some hairs on his neck and lower ears; his cheeks were an u

He rubbed his face clean with his glove. You couldn’t tow a sled at the speed he was going, which meant he was making up time. But he was riding fast, and often blind, into the path of a sniper who wasn’t shy about shooting cops.

He began slowing down at every curve and wishing the snowmobile didn’t whine like a chain saw, a

17

INSPIRED BY THE PANORAMIC VIEW OF PRISTINE WILDERNESS, the soundtrack from The Sound of Music played in his head-no narration, just the gentle strains of Julie Andrews’s bell-like voice.

He took something of a risk in leaving the vet down there in the sled, as he climbed a mountain ridge overlooking a long bend in Yankee Fork Road. Strong winds had blown away the snow, leaving scrabble rock and patches of ice, which he negotiated with care.

The ascent is carried out with precision, the timing critical, as he leaves his captive bound and unconscious far below. To make even the slightest mistake now can cost him everything, and so he goes about his mission with great care.

He loved grenades. It was well worth the climb to achieve the godlike sense of power associated with kicking an avalanche. He carried the CheyTac, as a measure of precaution: he could shoot the eye out of an eagle at half a mile with the thing. But it was the two grenades that really warmed his nut sack.

He stopped several times to catch his breath in the thin air. Looked down at the snowmobile and sled, a quarter mile beyond the turn. No one was going to come down this road, unless they were after him, but, if anyone did, he’d covered the unconscious vet with a blanket to hide the sled’s contents.

People had seriously misjudged the man. They took him for a hick and an incompetent. But in doing so they had allowed him to overhear the girl’s interrogation. They had given him a way out of this mess. The doctor was the witnesshe’d longed for. A simple double cross and his mission-his message-was saved.

He sat down on a rock to quiet himself. It wouldn’t do to handle grenades in this state. He smoked a cigarette and took in the scenery. His plan was a simple one: as a precaution, he would kick an avalanche and cover the Y in Yankee Fork Road, making it impassable. Snowmobiles would be blocked by a giant wall of ice and rock and, to the right, a precipitous drop-off. No one would get through here except on foot.

He heard a buzzing in his ears as he removed the concussion grenade from his satchel, pulled the pin, and heaved it well out into the snowfield. Moments later, he heard its soft cough. Watched as the center of the slope calved and caved simultaneously, an enormous shelf of snow sinking and breaking free from the uniformity above. Snow rippled as the newly created shelf pushed against the snow below, looking like age lines on an elderly face.

The sounds came next: a deep groaning, like the awakening of some great beast. This was interrupted once again by the buzzing whine of an insect, the contained anger pulsing past his ears.

The crack in the slowly shifting shelf of snow widened.

Then he saw what appeared to be a little black bug shooting along the road, and the insect sound took on an entirely new meaning: a snowmobile.

It was barreling down Yankee Fork Road, coming from the direction of Challis. Alone. It all but ruled out the cops; they always traveled in pairs or groups. No, this was some poor shit out on a nature ride who’d chosen the wrong day and the wrong route.

All at once, the snow slid in a massive, beautiful display of the raw power of nature. It was like a dam bursting.

He gloried in the moment, feeling the earth shuddering at his feet, hearing that sound, now more like a jet taking off.

It buried the buzz of the snowmobile, wiped out the soundtrack, silenced the narrator.

It moved first as a unit, as if the whole side of the mountain were falling. But then inertia and momentum collided, and a central chute rose, in a massive upheaval, a wide river of flowing snow, rock, and ice, gorging out the center of the slide and sucking more and more snow and debris down with it. Two huge trees at the edge of the far hill snapped like matchsticks and were carried down, swallowed whole.

And there, still unaware, came the black bug of the snowmobile, curving slowly around the long bend, headed directly into its unforgiving path.