Blue Wolf In Green Fire (38 page)

Click-click.

“The light will help us,” Grinda said.

Service slid down to the terraced area below and went directly to Carmody. His pulse was weak. The tourniquet had loosened. Service retightened it and opened the man's coat to find a plume of blood spreading down the chest.

He looked up above and said, “Gus.”

His friend came sliding down behind him.

Service cut open Carmody's shirt. The entry wound was in the high belly. He looked at Gus, who was opening their first-aid pack and pulling out gauze. “All we can do is pack it and maintain pressure,” Service said as he broke open a space blanket and began to work it around Carmody.

“We've got to get EMS in here,” Gus said.

Service got on the radio and called the Delta County sheriff's department dispatcher, gave their location, and told her they had shots fired and two down, one of them dicey. They needed EMS and backup and they needed them to run silent. He gave the dispatcher their location, and asked her for a read-back to make sure she had it right. She did, and promised help was rolling.

“Are you under fire?” the dispatcher asked.

“Not at the moment.”

Service tried to think fast as Gus touched his hand to his head and stared at the blood.

“She's not gonna be all that mobile with that big fifty,” Service said. “We need to push her, keep her moving, not give her a chance to set up. I'm going to go down the back of the hill and circle around. You stay with Carmody.” Service climbed back up to Grinda, who had struggled into a sitting position and winced as she reached for her rifle case and began to slide out her weapon.

Service looked at her.

“We've gone way south of south,” she said with a look of resignation.

Service knew she was right, but they had limited options. He could use Kota to come in below and help him, but Kota's authority didn't extend off the reserve. Besides, it was too dangerous. If he went alone, he had only to worry about Haloran. Trying to hook up with Kota would add to the danger and present a potential distraction.

He slid Gus's rifle case down the incline to where his friend was still working on Carmody.

“Take the radio,” Grinda said.

“No. If I go down, that cuts commo for you and Gus.”

Grinda nodded and Service helped her over to a rock where she could make a rest for her rifle. He gave her his night-vision equipment. “If this thing stretches into darkness, use it.”

He had moved quickly down the back of the hill and circled wide of the clearing, approaching from the east. He had been at it all day, taking it slowly and deliberately, and still had not cut Haloran's trail. He was within a hundred yards of the clearing. Had she set up in the woods on the edge so that she could shoot upward? Possible. Assume nothing, he cautioned himself.

Service didn't need to check his watch to know that he had about thirty minutes of light remaining. He had gotten into the cedars on the far side of the clearing and was cautiously crawling forward, checking for movement and taking it slow. Maybe Haloran had fled, but he doubted it. In her circumstances he would find a hidey-hole and wait for an enemy to come to him, take him out, and then move to the next target. When you were outnumbered, the best tactic was to whittle down the odds one at a time until you could get into a superior position. Right now it was purely one on one, and Haloran had the edge because he was in the position of trying to find her. All she had to do was sit tight and wait and he had already seen that she was up to it.

In the waning light he was about to resign himself to another cold night, but movement to his right caught his attention. He froze, moving only his eyes, and saw a cedar limb shudder slightly, spilling snow. Below it protruded the barrel of the fifty-caliber rifle pointed toward him. The bore looked big enough to shoot a round the size of a walnut.

The fact that it was pointed in his direction didn't mean she had seen him. It was too hard to swing such a heavy weapon around. More likely she had it pointed in a general direction. She wouldn't aim until she had a target to shoot at. He suddenly thought of the red laser and cringed. Assume the worst.

He lay still, watching the barrel, hoping to see movement.

“There ya be,” a voice said from behind him.

Service didn't move.

“I wanted the bloody wolf, but you'll have to do,” Haloran said. “Gracious of you to come alone,” she added. “But I've always loved an audience.”

He tried to quickly assess the situation. She was behind him, how far he couldn't judge. He had heard no sound from a weapon, which meant she had used the fifty as a decoy.

He assumed she had another weapon and a round in the chamber. He carefully unholstered his SIG.

“Youse can have it standin' like a man, or lyin' dere like a mongrel. It's yer choice.” There was no hint of Irish in her accent now. She sounded pure Yooper. How the hell could she sound like two different people, clicking it on and off like a recording?

“I'll stand,” he said.

“Slowly,” she warned. “Use two fingers to grip the barrel of the weapon and hold it up. I want to see the other three fingers pointed up. If I don't see what I'm askin' for, youse're dead, eh?”

He had just gathered his knees under him when he heard a plop of falling snow and in what seemed like the same instant a shot exploded from the hill where he had left Gus and Grinda. He instinctively threw himself flat, held tight to his weapon and scrambled under a log, taking a load of wet snow down his neck.

The shot had come from the hill. Good old Gus, he thought as he huddled under the log, frantically piling up snow to help reduce his profile. When he felt secure, he used his hand to cut a small opening in the snow. No sign of her. Maybe she was hit, but he wasn't going to chance it by moving now. She had already snookered him once.

He spent the night under the log, trying to remain alert and think warm thoughts, and failing miserably, the cold all through his body like a blood replacement. He moved only when he heard snowmobiles approaching in the clearing behind him. McCants and Gus had waited for daylight before green-lighting help. He would have done the same. Struggling to his feet, he stayed bent over and began to approach the place where he thought he had heard Haloran's voice. As he got close he saw blood spattered on the snow for several feet.

Kate Haloran was on her left side, the top of her head gone, particles of brain and bone slung across the snow in a fan shape. A forty-millimeter SIG Sauer was two feet from her hand, mostly covered by snow. Gus's weapon.

Simon del Olmo came cautiously through the trees and Service waved for him to join him. Simon looked from the body to the hill.

“Helluva shot.” Then he bent forward and sank to his knees.

Service asked for del Olmo's radio and called Grinda.

Gus Turnage answered.

“Great shot,” Service said.

“Sheena,” his friend said. “Not me.”

“Can she talk?”

“EMS is working on her now. She refused to go with them last night when they took Carmody out.” Service could hear admiration in his friend's voice.

“Put her on.”

“Yeah?” Grinda said. She sounded worn out.

“Thanks,” Service said.

“Is she? . . .”

“She's in custody,” Service said. He would tell her the facts later.

Grinda said nothing, but he guessed she knew.

Gus came back on the radio. “Sheena's got a broken rib, maybe her sternum too. She's hurting, but she's tough.”

“You?” Service asked.

“Headache. Carmody didn't have my piece.”

“I've got it. How's Carmody?”

“Still alive when he left here. The tourniquet may have saved his life, but it's probably gonna cost him his leg. He lost a lot of blood, Grady. EMS took him to Marquette. That's where we're going too.”

“See you there, Gus.”

He took del Olmo to the fifty-cal Haloran had used to divert his attention. The bolt-action weapon was nearly six feet long and had a massive scope attached. He saw
harris gunworks
engraved on the lower barrel as he bent over to look at the weapon, careful to not touch it. The scope was a twenty-power Leupold MKIVM1, a model developed for the military. The laser sight was built into the scope, controlled by a box attached to the scope mounting. It was a lethal weapon. Service leaned down and saw that the serial number had been filed off the weapon and the area was discolored, suggesting acid had been used.

The younger officer said, “We had those suckers in Saudi. They're deadly to twenty-two hundred yards. You guys had them in 'Nam, right?”

“Not like this,” Service said. “What we had we jury-rigged on the spot.”

“Hey,” del Olmo said. “You could be its daddy.”

It was a discomfiting thought, that things spawned in Vietnam more than thirty years ago were still intervening in his life.

There were small patches of frozen blood on the snow by the fifty. They followed the drops and Haloran's tracks to her body. She had been hit twice, once up on the hill and again by the rifle. Had Carmody gotten the first round in her, or had Sheena? Forensics would have to sort it out.

The younger officer knelt and examined the body. “She's hit here,” he said, pointing to the right side of the woman's chest. Service stared up at the hill across the clearing and shook his head. She had come all the way to cover with minimal bleeding. He had seen this happen before with animals and humans. It also explained why she had not pushed on. She was hit and hurting, waiting for somebody to come to her, had crawled into cover to wait, must've seen him approaching, left the fifty as a decoy, and worked her way behind him. He wondered whether, if they had all just sat tight, she would've died from the initial wound.

Simon del Olmo patted him on the back. “I predict incoming paperwork,
jeffe.
”

Grady Service sat heavily on a log and lit a cigarette, watching his hand shake as if it were not part of him.

His friend sat beside him, took out a tin of Bullshido Chew and stuffed a pinch into his cheek. They sat quietly for a long time, waiting for others to arrive to take control of the body. In the distance they heard a wolf raise its voice, and a second animal answer. Wolves had settled in the Mosquito Wilderness,
his
wilderness, and as a cold and exhausted Grady Service sat with his young friend, he wondered what it was going to take to protect the animals from the only predator they needed to fear.

32

Grady Service marched into the reception area of the Emergency Services unit at Marquette General Hospital and asked a nurse to point him to the morgue. Minutes later he was standing in a room looking at a wary technician. There were two autopsy tables with stainless-steel tops and a wall of stainless-steel drawers. The room was cold.

He said, “A woman's body was brought in this morning. The head's blown off. Which drawer?”

The technician's eyes narrowed. “You can't be in here.”

“Which
fucking
drawer?”

The technician pointed and Service said, “Open it.”

“I have to get a pathologist,” the technician said.

“Then get him.”

A woman appeared in a white lab coat, the technician cowering behind her. The woman had silver hair in a bun and wore a frown.

“What's going on here, Officer?”

“Open that drawer.” He pointed.

“We have procedures,” she said.

“Open the drawer,” he repeated.

The pathologist turned to the technician. “Call security.”

Service said, “Are you going to open it or not?”

“You don't belong here,” the doctor said.

Service pulled out the long drawer, unzipped the body bag, and worked it down to Haloran's waist. He used his knife to cut open Haloran's coveralls and tugged the cloth down to midthigh. He paused for a moment, then lifted the waist of her panties, looked for several seconds, stepped back, turned, grinned, and marched out of the room, leaving the doctor and technician staring at him.

Gus Turnage had a bandage wrapped around the top of his head and was sitting on the edge of a bed pulling wool socks over his union suit as he carped at a stocky nurse with the countenance of a cocker spaniel. A paper hospital gown was in shreds on the floor near his battered Danner boots. “I am
not
being admitted,” Gus insisted.

“You've already
been
admitted,” the nurse countered.

Irresistible force and immovable object, Service thought.

“Then I am de-admitting myself,” Gus fired back at her.

Service left his friend to check on Grinda, who had just been moved into a private room. There was an
i.v.
stand beside the bed. Her mane of golden brown hair was mashed into the shape of a helmet, her face covered with red splotches. She looked uncomfortable and confused. He had killed enemy soldiers in Vietnam and understood what she was going through. But he had never killed anyone in the line of duty during his DNR career and he suspected that this would feel worse than in a war where killing was happening all around you.

Grinda looked at him and tried to speak. “I . . .”

He held up his hand. “You did your job, Elza. You understand the procedure now, that you'll be put on administrative leave during the investigation?”

She nodded.

He rubbed her leg. “Don't worry. They'll probably have you answering phones at the district office.”

Grinda rolled her eyes.

He debated how much to tell her and how, and decided not to sugar-coat it. “You hit her twice, the first time up on the hill in the dark.” He touched a place on the right side of his chest.

“I was guessing,” she said. “In her place, I'd fire as I moved, so I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance if I put a quick one to each side. I guess I was lucky.”

“No, I was the lucky one,” Service said. “She was going to pop me.”

Grinda's voice was barely audible. “I went for her head. I would've shot sooner, but I couldn't see her because of snow in the tree. When it fell, there she was. I'm sorry I took so long.”

“You did great.”

Sheena Grinda looked unhappy. “Alive, we could have broken the whole operation.”

“With Johns gone, the operation is finished, or at least regrouping. We'll clean it up for you,” he said.

“Still,” she said. “I went for her head. I wanted her dead.” She sounded appalled.

“That makes two of us,” he said, earning a weak and appreciative grin.

Carmody had been in surgery and was in the recovery area. Sheriff Lee and Sergeant Parker from the Newberry district office were outside the room with a Marquette County deputy Service didn't recognize. The self-serving Parker had once been his supervisor. He no longer reported to the man, but Parker remained a jerk. He was here to bask in what he perceived to be glory for DNR law enforcement. If the situation had gone badly there would be no sign of Parker.

His former sergeant perked up and smiled when he saw him. “Glad to see you, Grady!”

Service ignored Parker and turned to Lee. “Where's Carmody?”

Freddy Bear Lee nodded at the door and pushed it open. “No feds yet but they're on the way, and the doctors say he shouldn't be disturbed,” the sheriff said. “I'll guard the door.”

“Thanks, Freddy.” Service said as he stepped into the room.

There were monitors along the ceiling above the bed. Carmody looked awake but his eyes were bloodshot and distant, his skin ashen.

“They took the bloody leg,” Carmody said without emotion. “ I guess it's the pirate's life for me. It is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King. Or shall I become a major-general, join the righteous?” Carmody grinned and sang, “I am the very model of a modern major-general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical!”

The Irishman was loopy from drugs. “You didn't know Haloran before,” Service said.

Carmody said, “Understatement from the mouth of a Yank. Your people killed the bitch.”

“Funny how the past boomerangs, eh, Minnis?”

The man in the bed grinned. “I'm under the influence of pharmas, boyo. Nothing I say can be relied upon. ‘You've scotched the snake, not killed it,' wrote Billy the Bard. She'd not come for me. No photos of me, nothing, I've become invisible man. ‘And with bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond,'” the man in the bed mumbled. “No shame in quoting the most British of bards. Did you know dear old Willie-boy came to Papism at the moment of his passing? Timing is everything, my friend. Mine got a bit fooked, you see. As Mr. Gilbert wrote it, ‘The policeman's lot is not a happy one.'”

“Haloran recognized you.”

“That night, after I talked to you. She was forever at me about the old country, but I never gave her more than a sniff. Born in Boston, schooled in Dublin, returned to the bosom of Dear Old Uncle Sam like the good native son.”

“Which of course your records corroborate.”

“The glories of the stage of shadows, lad. I shall truly miss that leg.”

“How did she find out?”

“Ah, a wee slip of the tongue, I fear. 'Twas Horace, I think, wrote, ‘It is the mountaintop the lightning strikes.'” His voice trailed away.

“Minnis?”

“Aye, I'm here. The night after we spoke I found a snapshot. She was standing in front of Hadrian's Wall.”

Service let him talk.

“The Caledonian tribes of northern Scotland were under one pugnacious Calgacus, who led his equally pugnacious lads against the Romans at Mons Graupius. The Roman bastards killed thirty thousand that day, but the survivors fled north, took the oath, were never subdued, fought on. Later the Emperor Hadrian built a wall to block all traffic to the north and serve as a reminder. You see the irony?” Minnis asked with a grin. “Force and walls cannot take freedom from men determined to remain free. The field below the battle site became a symbol that so long as a few survive, so long as but one lives, the battle shall never end. The place is commonly called the Field of Blood, but to some it is Heart's Field.”

“Some?”

“Aye, some, the few who fight on,” Minnis said disconsolately. “We were drunk. I saw the photo, made clever about grass growing on the bloody heart.”

“And then she knew.”

The man shrugged. “Conjecture. We were headed up the hill for the rendezvous with the wolf and she turned on me, pistol in hand. She put one into me knee and took me weapon, swearing to give me a proper finish when her work was done. A great Kraut windbag said it best, ‘In revenge and love woman is more barbarous than man.'”

“She knew you were Minnis.”

“Draw your own conclusions. What she knew, I believe, she knew from the rat in your ranks, that I was of
you,
not of
her.
Not Carmody of the old country, just a cop about to spoil her game.”

Goddamn Allerdyce. “You took my man's weapon.”

“Couldn't be helped. She'd nicked mine. The need was upon me, my blood risen, even as it gushed forth. I was forced to give the lad a wee crack on the noggin.”

“We had it staked out.”

“Aye, and I knew the bitch had taken my leg and intended more. I got a round into her up there on the mountain.”

“You missed,” Service said.

Carmody glowered, but lifted his head and looked directly at Service. “You'll tell SuRo I shan't be returning.”

“You can tell her yourself.”

The Irishman grunted and lowered his head. “‘Light thickens and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood. The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.' For a Pom, the little bastard had the gift. Perhaps I'll write my memoirs, give Frankie McCourt a run for his money.”

The door opened behind Service. Freddy Bear Lee backed into the room holding his hands in front of him like a tackle defending a pass rush.

“You can't be in here,” Cassie Nevelev snapped from behind the sheriff. Wink Rector and Barry Davey stood in the doorway behind her. There was no sign of the FBI biggies.

“I was just leaving,” Service said, leaning close to Nevelev as he squeezed by. “Take good care of Major-General Minnis.”

Nevelev's face twisted into a look of total confusion.

Captain Grant was in a private room. His eyes lit up when he saw Service.

“Shaved it close,” the captain said.

“Grinda bailed me out.”

“She's a fine officer.”

“What about you?” Service asked, using his foot to push a chair over to the bed.

The captain shrugged. “No permanent damage at this point. Lucky.”

They sat in silence for a moment while Service gathered his thoughts. “Barry Davey gave me Carmody, who was Mouse Minnis, a killer for a fringe IRA group. Things got too hot for him in Northern Ireland and he moved to England and joined an animal rights group. He focused on British companies with links to Northern Ireland. A woman later came out of Northern Ireland and cooperated with the Brits and it got too hot for Minnis. Her name was Bridget Galway.”

“Larola Brule,” the captain said.

Service went on. “A second woman was sent to get the first one. That was Haloran—Wealthy Johns. In the wake of Haloran's arrival in the U.K., Minnis and the first woman ended up in the States, both of them working for Fish and Wildlife.”

“Grinda shot Haloran,” the captain said.

Service nodded. “Until the day she showed up in the Mosquito I knew her as Wealthy Johns and we were out to break her poaching op. But Fred Lee brought me a photo of Haloran and when I saw Johns I realized they were the same person. Haloran killed Larola Brule at Vermillion. She was the target. Her boyfriend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“And the Brule woman—Galway—she was the turncoat who cooperated with the Brits?”

“Yes. I don't understand how Haloran got here, or how or why the feds would bring Minnis and Galway across the pond and end up with both of them on the Fish and Game payroll.”

The captain's gaze was on the wall at the end of the bed. “Perhaps the two of them were already on a federal payroll.”

This caught Service short. What had Carmody said about the records not lying? Was he an American after all?

“The wilderness of mirrors,” his captain said. “Images within images and none of them real. What will you do next?”

“Gus Turnage and I will talk to Skelton Gitter, squeeze him, see if he was part of Haloran's poaching op. I'll be interested to know when and how he met her. Did she come here first and then learn about Brule, or did she come here because of Brule?”

“Some answers are not worth the effort to obtain them.”

A veiled warning from his supervisor? “Gitter was or wasn't part of it and case closed, is that it?”

The captain nodded. “Done is done.”

“Allerdyce was involved,” Service said. “I don't know how or when he met Haloran, or what his role was other than feeding information to her about what we were doing. I thought he and I had an understanding, but he damn near got us killed.”

“Arrangements with informants rarely persist. Better to limit such arrangements to one transaction at a time.”

“The thing is that without Limpy's involvement we might have lost the blue wolf. And because of him we nearly lost the animal anyway. I don't know how to keep score anymore.”