Chapter Twenty-One. Jake was frantic with worry

Jake was frantic with worry. She had witnessed most of Kat’s interrogation of the intruder outside the bunker, staring stunned at the monitor as her enigmatic friend subdued the man against the rock wall. Kat looked to have the situation under control, but Jake sorely wished she could hear the conversation between the two.

Suddenly, the man fought back. Jake saw him hit Kat hard against the side of her head. The flashlight went flying and the two were flailing away at each other, locked in a desperate struggle that propelled both their bodies outside camera range.

Jake waited, her heart pounding in her ears, her anxiety an enormous weight in her chest, but neither Kat nor the intruder immediately reappeared in the monitor.

Jake didn’t think at all about what she did next. She hobbled to the exit door of the living room, her promise to Kat forgotten, overtaken by her concern for her rescuer’s safety. Once through the door, she glanced around the tunnel, taking in the big steel door at the other end, the clothes and boots along the wall, and, immediately to her right, the ladder rungs that led up to the exit she’d seen Kat emerge from.

Jake yanked a pair of black insulated coveralls from a peg on the wall. They were much too large for her, so she rolled cuffs at her ankles and wrists. All the footwear was several sizes too big as well. She pulled on a pair of boots, then fished around in one of the army barrels and pulled out gloves and scarves, stuffing the material into the boots to make them fit more snugly. She donned a pair of heavy woolen gloves and a hat and, trying to ignore the pain in her knee and wrist, struggled to scale the ladder rungs. She was out of the emergency exit a couple of minutes later. I’m coming, Kat. Hang on.

Kat stayed where she had fallen for several moments to catch her breath. Then she got to her knees and unzipped her coveralls enough to jam her right hand beneath her left armpit to warm it up. It was nearly blue from its long exposure to the frigid temperatures.

She leaned over Frank’s supine body. He was out cold. Dumb shit, she thought, aiming the crude sentiment at the man before her, but also acknowledging that she had left herself open for his attack. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him--he was just a hired gun--but he’d left her no choice.

She had a lot to do now. She looked up at the sky. A thick layer of clouds obscured the moon and stars. If it snowed soon, the bunker might be safe for at least a while longer. She wanted to check the forecast, but first she had to get rid of all evidence of Frank’s being at the bunker.

She got slowly to her feet. The big man had clocked her a good one to the side of her face when he’d hit her. A small cut beneath her eye was bleeding profusely, and there would be a large, ugly bruise across her cheek and jaw. She felt the blood running down her face but ignored it.

Her hand had warmed sufficiently for her to regain the use of her fingers. She flexed the sore muscles of her forearm. Standing at Frank’s shoulders, she leaned down to take one of his wrists in each of her hands. Grunting slightly from the effort, she pulled him toward the rock wall entrance several feet away. Heavy though he was, the task was not as difficult as it might have been because his nylon suit slid over the snow with little resistance.

Once at the panel, she keyed in the access code and hauled Frank into the generator room. She removed a roll of duct tape from her toolbox and trussed him up, securing his feet and his hands behind him. Then she searched the pockets of his snowsuit.

She found a cell phone, which she immediately took apart to render useless and check for a homing device. To her relief, there was none. She also found a gun--a.44 magnum--extra ammunition, a jackknife, a candy bar, and a map of Michigan. She stuffed the weapons into the pockets of her coveralls.

She unzipped his snowsuit and thoroughly searched the clothes he wore underneath. She leafed through his wallet before she stuffed it into her pocket. When that was done, she went back outside the bunker and retrieved Frank’s flashlight, still lit under several inches of snow.

She used it to find her night-vision goggles, which she’d removed just before she snuck up on him. She followed the tracks he’d made until she came to his rental snowmobile a short distance away. The key was in the ignition. She drove it through the rock wall entrance and parked it beside her own machine. She closed the hidden door again.

Frank would be coming around any minute.

Jake pushed herself up through the emergency exit and shut the hatch behind her, cutting off the small amount of light from the tunnel and plunging her into darkness. She waited a minute for her eyes to adjust, then began searching for the tracks Kat had made.

She remembered the way Kat had gone after leaving the exit, so she headed in the same direction. It was very difficult to see, especially once she entered the edge of the forest. Finally, she stumbled across a trail in the snow she could barely make out. She moved with agonizing slowness because of her knee, but the adrenaline pouring through her body propelled her on.

She had gone only thirty feet or so into the woods when the silence was broken by the high-pitched whine of a snowmobile. She froze at the sound, which seemed to be coming from some distance away, farther down the hill she was descending and off to her left. What did it mean? Was the intruder leaving, and if so, what had become of Kat? Her heart sped up. She headed directly toward the sound, leaving the tracks she had been following.

Jake had hobbled quite some distance when the roar of the snowmobile ended as abruptly as it had begun. She stood still, listening, and heard another faint sound from the same general direction. Then all was silent again.

Jake was momentarily torn about whether to continue forward or backtrack to regain the foot trail she’d been following. She was in the deepest, blackest part of the forest, and it was nearly impossible to make out her own tracks. She decided the safest route would be to return the way she’d come and try to pick up Kat’s trail again.

She saw a faint path veering off to the right. She followed it, confident she would soon catch up to her friend. She knew from watching the monitors that it had taken Kat only six or eight minutes to travel from the exit to the wall where she had confronted the intruder. But Jake knew it would take her much longer. Pain shot through her knee. She limped forward at an ever-slower pace.

The snow was deep enough, and it was dark enough, that Jake couldn’t see individual prints in the snow, just a line cut through the soft powder. But she just had to be on Kat’s trail. Didn’t she?

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30