The voices getting louder.
When he came around the next curve, there was a green sign that read “Togwotee Pass, ELEV 9658.”
In the distance, a lodge. Gas station. Tiny cabins off in the spruce trees.
The parking lot was crowded with an array of vehicles—dozen civilian cars and SUVs, three Humvees, two armored personnel carriers, one Stryker, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and a big rig with two Red Cross insignias emblazoned on the trailer that framed the words, “Refugee Relief.”
Jack headed toward a group of men in woodland camo BDUs standing by the gas pumps. One of them spotted him, and without a word to the others, shouldered his M16 which had been fitted with a nightscope. The rest of the men saw his reaction, drew their own weapons, and turned to face Jack.
He stopped, staring at five men pointing a variety of firearms in his direction, and the first thing to cross his mind was that it had been nine days since they’d fled the cabin, and how strange it felt to see people who weren’t his family again.
“Where’d you come from?”
Jack bent over to catch his breath, pointed back down the road. The man closest to him was the one who’d spoken. A redhead. Very pale. Freckled. Looked to be his age, his height, but with thirty added pounds of muscle and only a two-day beard. He pointed a Sig Sauer at Jack’s face.
Said, “You’re on foot?”
“Yes.”
“Carrying any weapons?” Jack had to think, realized he’d left the Glock back at the pipe with Dee, and considering the firepower on hand, figured that was probably a good thing.
“No, nothing.”
The man waved a hand toward the others and they lowered their machineguns.
“Where you from?”
Jack straightened. “Albuquerque. Been hiking through the mountains last week and a half. Haven’t had food in five days.”
The man holstered his pistol and smiled, said, “Well, by God, somebody get this man an MRE,” but no one moved.
He had blue eyes the color of a washed-out summer sky and he was squinting a little in the sun. “Good thing you caught us. We were on the verge of moving out.”
“I’m Jack Colclough.” Jack stepped forward and extended his hand, which the man accepted.
“Good to meet you, Jack. My name. . .” The elbow caught Jack on the chin. He sat down in the snow as the reinforced steel toe of a black leather combat boot slammed into his face. “. . .is not really important.” Jack opened his eyes. He lay on his back, the redhead’s face inches from his own and the blue sky distorted by tears that streamed out of his eyes from his crushed nose. “Who else is with you?”
“No one.”
The man’s hand wrapped around his ring finger and twisted until Jack felt the bone snap and he howled as the man stood on his arm and unsheathed a knife.
When Jack came to, the man was holding his ring finger in front of his face and sliding the gold wedding band up and down the free-range digit.
“Where is the person who put this ring on your finger?”
The pain reached up through Jack’s entire left arm like a molten rod he couldn’t shake free.
The man unholstered his Sig Sauer, pushed the barrel into Jack’s left eye. “Sir, I will put a bullet through your cornea.”
“They’re dead,” Jack said. “You crazy f**kers killed them.”
Dee opened her eyes, the sound of cranking engines having stirred her from sleep. She eased Cole down onto the floor of the pipe and crawled outside.
The sun-glare blinding off the snow.
She called for Jack.
Scanned the construction site but didn’t see him.
Hurried through the snow into the road as other engines roared to life.
They weren’t far—just a short distance through the trees—and she was running up the road now toward a clearing.
She rounded a turn. There was an oasis at the top of the pass. Military vehicles rumbled in the parking lot, and for a moment her heart lightened and she thought they were saved until her eyes fell upon two soldiers a hundred feet away, dragging a bloody-faced man by his arms toward the open doors of an eighteen-wheeler.
Jack.
She started toward him, got three steps before the mother inside her screamed louder than the wife. Out in the open now. The noise of two dozen engines was deafening and the air was filling with exhaust. The men were pulling her husband up the ramp into the back of the truck while two other soldiers aimed their weapons into the darkness of the semitrailer. She held the Glock, but in the face of all this, it felt like a bad joke. That voice inside her begging to run. Someone was going to see her and chase her into the woods, kill her or take her away, and then her children would be alone out here and she couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.
She backpedaled off the road into the woods and crouched down in a thicket of spruce saplings as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle lurched out of the parking lot into the road, leading the convoy down the west side of the pass. Other cars and SUVs fell in behind as Jack’s legs disappeared into the trailer. Soon after, the two soldiers emerged and lowered the rear door. Latched it, hopped down onto the pavement, lifted the metal ramp, walked it underneath the bed of the truck. They ran to the Stryker and one of them ducked into the back while the other climbed up onto the roof and manned the 50-cal.
The big rig lumbered out of the parking lot, tailed by the Stryker, and it felt like her heart was being ripped from her chest as she watched the convoy begin to slip away, rolling down the other side of the mountain.
In an instant, it was gone. All she could hear was the transfer truck downshifting on a steep grade. Then the top of the pass stood silent. No wind. No birds cheeping. Just the sun pouring down onto the snow.
Dee leaned over into the ice and came apart.
She staggered back into the road and followed it down the east side of the pass. Her throat raw from crying and she still held clumps of her hair that she’d ripped out. Desperate to do something to fix this but she couldn’t. That helplessness felt like loose electricity under her skin—wild and frantic but with no outlet. The urge to put the gun to her own head bordered on irresistible.
She reached the construction site and walked over to the pipe. Her children still slept. She crawled inside and sat with her knees drawn into her chest, trying not to cry again so they might sleep a little longer. Jack was slipping farther and farther away with every passing second, and she could feel the expanding distance and it tore her guts out.
Naomi was stirring. Dee turned and stared into the shadow of the pipe, watched her daughter sit up and rub her eyes.