Brace For Impact Read online

  Ten minutes later she heard someone/something else coming, but this one was a lot quieter than the bear had been. How he recognized where he’d left her, she didn’t know, but by the time she made out Will, his gaze had already locked on to her.

  “You okay?” he asked, sinking down beside her. His hair was full of twigs and leaves and debris and his arms and one cheek displayed new scratches. Sweat darkened his tan T-shirt and Maddy had no doubt the back of the shirt would be sweat-soaked, too, where he’d been carrying the pack. So far today he’d carried it with him during his reconnaissance, then stashed it somewhere for pickup once he returned with her.

  Glad she’d had time to recover from the close encounter with the bear, she said, “Mostly. I had a scare when a bear passed only a few feet from me. I thought—”

  In his usual calm way, he said, “Your typical black bear is as afraid of you as you are of it. Cubs can change that, but the one you met might have been male.”

  Her attempt to read his expression didn’t get her anywhere, so she finally asked, “Did you see anyone?”

  He shook his head, weariness or maybe frustration finally showing. “Nope, but I don’t believe they’ve given up.”

  “Do you want something to eat?” She extended the first thing her hand closed on, a box of raisins.

  “No, thanks.” He grabbed a tree root and pulled himself to his feet. “Let’s keep moving.”

  She got up and fell in behind him, grateful when he parted the springy alder branches and held them until she was through, but also feeling guilty. Because she was so awkward and slow, Will was having to hike three times as far as she was. For at least the hundredth time, she silently acknowledged how lucky she was that he’d been here when she needed him.

  * * *

  “WE NEED TO cross the creek here,” Will said. “I made it without getting wet, but the rocks are slippery.”

  Maddy nodded stoically. The bank ahead of them rose in an impassible, rocky, alder-infested cliff.

  “Step where I do,” Will told her, even knowing he didn’t need to.

  The constant mist above the fast-running creek provided a perfect environment for moss. The lower in elevation they progressed, the richer the moss. A pretty emerald green, it covered rocks, swallowed downed trees and enveloped anything that held still long enough. And, damn, it was slippery stuff underfoot, especially when wet.

  He must be getting tired, because his mind jumped to how it had felt to kiss Maddy. Naturally, a foot skidded and he ended up shin deep in ice-cold water. Grimacing, Will pulled his foot out, shook it and set off again. Fortunately, with daintier feet, Maddy was having better luck staying dry.

  Will had almost reached the far side when he heard a distant hum. Airplane? He looked up but didn’t see anything in the blue arch of sky except clouds gathering over the Picket Range.

  The sound grew, and he knew.

  “Helicopter!” He reached back for Maddy’s hand. “Hurry!”

  He splashed through water for the last few steps and thought she did, too. Almost immediately, they entered the familiar snarl of willow and alder and devil’s club, but he wasn’t convinced the cover was sufficient to hide them from above. Neither of them wore bright colors, but even the greens and browns were subtly wrong.

  They ran, or as close to running as they could do. The noise swelled, a swarm of angry bees. It could be a sightseeing helicopter or a search and rescue one heading to pick up an injured climber. Will didn’t believe it, though.

  A thick clump of lush sword ferns ahead looked like their best bet. He and Maddy raced for it. At his direction, she wriggled among the ferns, lying prone, and Will followed. He pulled out the Glock and rolled onto his back, parting fronds until he had a view that was barely a slit.

  Not twenty seconds later a black helicopter flying dangerously low came into sight. At almost the same moment, a deer in a panic struggled past. A good decoy, he thought. The helicopter kept moving, staying low.

  As the racket receded, he murmured, “They’re getting nervous. They’re afraid they’ve lost us.”

  “They might have expected us to get down the mountain faster.”

  All he could see were her boots. He reached out and clasped her ankle because he needed to touch her. “They have to know you’re injured.” Even if their enemy hadn’t gotten a good look at the two of them fleeing the hail of gunfire, people rarely walked away unscathed from a plane crash, especially one that had killed the pilot and the only other passenger.

  Maddy didn’t say anything.

  Will’s mind kept racing. How had these men accounted for him? Did they think they’d been misinformed and really there’d been a third passenger? Maybe even a second US marshal? If that were the case, they’d expect him to be armed.

  Impatient with himself, he realized they already knew that. They would have found Marshal Rankin’s body and the empty holster.

  Will was torn between moving on and waiting to find out whether the helicopter would turn right around and retrace its path. Depended on how sure the two hunters on the ground were that he and Maddy had come this way. They might fear Will and she had climbed over the flank of McMillan Spire and down Terror and Goodell Creeks, as he and Maddy had discussed. If she hadn’t been injured so badly, that might have been smart—except he reminded himself of the scarcity of cover at sub-alpine elevations.

  He mulled over what the Forest Service personnel would think about the black, unmarked helicopter scaring the crap out of the wildlife, and what they could realistically do about it.

  After venting a few words he should probably apologize for, Will said, “Let’s keep moving. I left my pack in a good place to stop for a bite to eat.”

  “Okay.”

  When she struggled to roll over, he took her hand and pulled her to her feet. He didn’t like that her face was bone-white except for those too-bright red spots on both cheeks. Fever. Even her hand was too hot.

  Will liked even less knowing that despite all his training, he couldn’t help her.

  As they resumed their trek, broken branches gave evidence of the animals that had passed this way—and possibly of the men he still expected to encounter ahead. Will kept the pace slow for Maddy’s sake and even his. He paused every few feet to listen, both for the helicopter returning and for the two gunmen. If they’d been hunkered down here for two days, they might have grown careless. Careless enough to talk, to set a fire to dry out the socks and pant legs they’d gotten wet when they slid on wet moss into the creek, tumultuous with snowmelt.

  The sound he did eventually hear was one he’d expected. He’d left his pack close by where Torrent Creek roared into Stetattle Creek.

  His next task was to figure out whether there was any easy way to get over Torrent, or whether they needed to find a way to yet again cross to the other side of Stetattle Creek. Shortly thereafter they’d come on Jay Creek and several others joining their waters to Stetattle, too. Each addition made their way more perilous—and, damn, he wished he didn’t feel as if the two of them were obediently trotting like cattle into a chute.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER the helicopter did pass over them again. Will thought it hovered briefly a short distance downstream, but the density of the rain forest growth meant he couldn’t see it. Had it stopped to drop off supplies? If so, had it flagged the trap he and Maddy were meant to spring?

  Fueled by determination and probably not much else, Maddy kept going. They weren’t more than a hundred yards from Torrent Creek when he led her deeper into the tangle to where he’d left his pack.

  When he pulled out most of what he had left in the way of food, Maddy shook her head and said dully, “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Eat anyway.” He handed her the water bottle. “Didn’t I give you some raisins? Those should give you a boost.”

  A short one, about all sweets were go
od for.

  For a moment she looked mulish, but after taking a long drink and returning the bottle to him, she produced the raisins and ate them slowly. Will confined himself to a small handful of almonds and a little bit of mixed dried fruit.

  Then he pored over his contour map again. In theory, they’d reach this end of the Stetattle Creek trail in no more than an hour or two, depending on the difficulties they met during that distance. Unfortunately, from what he’d read in guidebooks, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. In fact, it might not be possible to find any trace of trail there. It apparently wasn’t maintained with any regularity. Only about the last mile, leading into the small town of Diablo, saw much traffic at all.

  Still...if he were the gunmen, he’d set the ambush above Jay Creek, where the trail ended on the map. Hardy hikers must occasionally push on that far.

  Will had no doubt these men would be willing to kill anybody who saw them, even a family. They must be aware that would make them hunted men, however. Most people would be missed almost right away.

  Whereas if they could kill him and Maddy and carry their bodies even a few hundred yards from the creek, they might never be found. Will had registered for his climb, but would anyone really notice if he didn’t reappear? Maybe after a while somebody would wonder about the abandoned Jeep, but that could take weeks. And Maddy had been on the plane that went down. If the pilot had filed a flight plan, there should already be a search in progress for the downed plane. If he hadn’t, any search from the air would be happening well south of here. The route the small Cessna had taken deep into the North Cascades wasn’t a logical one to deliver passengers to Everett.

  When the plane was eventually found, rescue personnel would assume Maddy had lived but was direly injured and had wandered away. She could be anywhere. By that time—a minimum of a week after the plane went down?—the chances of her still being alive would be considered minimal.

  It was just too bad that Judge Brian Torkelson’s minions knew she wasn’t dead.

  Will especially disliked leaving Maddy this time, but he wanted to complete another leg of their hike out before stopping for the night. He shouldered his pack again and looked down at her. He’d swear she’d lost more weight than should be possible in a matter of only days.

  She gazed up at him. “Be careful, Will.”

  She’d been sitting close enough to see the map as he studied it and would have reached the same conclusion he had: they were close to the spot where they were meant to die.

  “I will.” He hesitated. “If you want to lie down and rest, I can put a few branches on top of you.”

  “There’s not much I could do if I were awake anyway, is there?”

  No. He’d actually considered leaving the Glock with her, but remembered her holding it in shaking hands when he first came on her. All she had to do was panic and shoot a bear or deer and she’d give away their location.

  He wasn’t convinced she could pull the trigger to kill someone anyway.

  If he, on the other hand, had a chance to take out one of the men, he wouldn’t hesitate.

  So he used his pocketknife to cut a few willow and alder branches, laid them gently atop her and said, “Sleep tight.”

  Walking away, Will wished she’d laughed. Her retreat into silence told him that either the pain was wearing her down, or the infection was gaining ground.

  On his own, with no enemy between him and civilization, he could have pushed on and been in Diablo before dark. As it was, even if they could get past the gunmen, nothing he’d read about the trail made him think it was navigable by flashlight. Which meant another night.

  When he glanced back, he discovered Maddy was already lost from his sight.

  Will moved as carefully as he could, stopping every few strides to listen, to look. If he was right, the two men weren’t mountain climbers or even necessarily hikers. They were probably ex-military, which gave them some skill, but not any level of comfort with a landscape so different from any in Iraq or Afghanistan.

  Will could say the same about himself, except he and several high school friends had done some climbing up here and in the Olympic Mountains. They’d climbed Mount Shasta first, of course, the volcano in their own neighborhood. Then they’d done Mount Rainier. The summer after his high school graduation and right before he enlisted, they came up to climb Glacier Peak, the most inaccessible of the northwest volcanoes and possibly the toughest climb, too. They’d been lucky to hook up with a couple of men who actually knew what they were doing. Standing on the summit of Glacier had been one of the more exhilarating moments of Will’s life.

  Maybe that was what he was doing up here in the North Cascades: trying to recapture remembered happiness. Except that this time he hadn’t climbed with friends or even strangers. He’d have said he was best off on his own...until he’d found Maddy.

  He watched for a chance of crossing Stetattle along here, but could see that wasn’t an option. The land on the far side climbed too steeply from the creek. That meant they instead had to cross Torrent Creek...which would be an ideal place to set a trap.

  When he knew he was getting close, Will left his pack behind and bent low as he crept forward, trying not to so much as shake the leaves. Long training and experience allowed him to become a ghost. He was hunting. His sharpened senses threw him back until momentarily the where and when blurred in his mind.

  But the nonstop roar of the waterfalls that made up Torrent Creek as it plunged from near the summit of Elephant Butte pulled him back to the present. When the white water tumbling over rocks came into sight, he lifted his binoculars and began his search.

  A tiny movement, a glint of something metallic, gave them away. He zeroed in on them, wishing he was looking through a rifle scope rather than binoculars. No such luck, and they were well out of range of a handgun.

  Wearing the green camouflage that blended eerily well with the lush surroundings, they had set up above a fallen tree that made a convenient bridge across Torrent Creek. From where Will crouched, it appeared to be the only way to cross.

  One of the two men lay on his belly with his AR-47 on a bipod. Behind him and screened by a few twisted alders and what might be a cedar, the second man sat with his back to the trunk of a large fir. His hands moved... He was eating. Will couldn’t quite tell what. His own stomach cramped but his awakened rage made it easy to ignore his physical needs.

  These men were prepared to kill a courageous, smart, sweet woman who’d done nothing wrong. No principles involved, no issues of national security, nothing personal at all, just a paycheck. That, or they actively enjoyed hunting their fellow humans. With no conscience, no empathy, the type sometimes made good soldiers—unless an occasion came when they had to depend on their own judgment.

  Will had never trained to be a sniper, never wanted to be one, but he’d just changed his mind. Too late.

  Now came the hard part: finding a way around the ambush...or a way to take out the men.

  Chapter Nine

  Maddy started awake, gasping from some horror already dissolving as most dreams did. Opening her eyes to find branches in her face added a jolt, too, until she remembered where she was and why. Then...then she felt as if they were a cozy comforter Will had tucked around her.

  She hurt so much. Maddy hadn’t said anything to Will, because she heard the rattle of the remaining pills in the bottle each time he doled out painkillers. They were almost gone. He hadn’t been taking any that she could see, and she suspected he hurt, too.

  If only she had a watch or her phone so she’d know what time it was and how long Will had been gone.

  Instead of sitting up, she stayed where she was, curled on her side. She could see where Will would emerge when he returned.

  Although she drifted some, she didn’t think it was more than another ten minutes or so when he did appear. To her surprise, he still carried the
pack.

  “You didn’t leave it?”

  “I want to stay here for the night.” His expression was very closed, but anger leaked through.

  Pushing branches away, Maddy squirmed until she could push herself up to a sitting position. “What is it? Did you see them?”

  In the act of unzipping his pack, he flicked a glance at her. “I did. They’re set up just across Torrent Creek where it enters Stetattle. They found the obvious place to cross and assume we’re dumb enough to use it.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  The gray of his eyes had chilled, leaving her in no doubt that the soldier had taken the forefront. “I scouted farther up and found another way across. It’s...not easy to get to, and scary as hell. The log isn’t more than about ten inches in diameter. We’ll have to shimmy across on our butts, and, damn, I wish I’d brought a rope.”

  “Okay,” she said, refusing to surrender to fear. Or maybe she was just too tired, hurt too much, to be bothered by the possibility of an awful outcome.

  Will studied her broodingly. “We’ll see how you feel tomorrow. There is an alternative.”

  His grim tone awakened apprehension in her. “What is it? Are you...you won’t leave me and go for help, will you?”

  “No, although that might be smart.” He frowned. “Which reminds me...” Suddenly, he began digging in his pack. He came up with a smartphone. “I wonder...hey, look at that. About time the damn phone isn’t just deadweight. I might be able to make a call.”

  “You can’t!” she exclaimed in alarm.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to trust some search and rescue people than die?” he asked harshly.

  “You think Torkelson doesn’t have someone watching for anyone carried out of the park?” she scoffed. “It’s not that hard to get to someone in the hospital, and that’s assuming they’re not waiting at the trailhead to gun me and everyone else down.”