The Fraternity of the Stone (26 page)

He scanned the forest but couldn't find any sign of the team. Either they're awfully good, or they're not down there. Wouldn't that be a joke? he thought. To go through all this trouble when we didn't have to.

Chapter 11.

After dusk, he chose the best support on the rear side of the Horn - a boulder that his full strength couldn't budge.

Arlene came through the bushes, holding her rope and pack, kneeling beside him. "You found an anchor?"

"Here." He put her hand on the barely visible rock.

"You tested it?"

"It'll hold. With luck."

"Luck? Oh, brother." But she seemed to know he was joking. "We'd better get started." She reached in her pack and pulled out a nylon sling.

"I'll need your extra hardware. All I have is a rope and sling."

"That isn't like you, not to come fully prepared." Now she was joking.

"Well, I had a slight problem. A temporary shortage of funds."

As they spoke, keeping their voices low, Drew felt good to be working with her. He tied his nylon sling around the boulder. Arlene hooked a metal carabiner onto the sling, making sure that the carabiner's hinged flap was safely closed. She knotted the ends of her rope and looped its midpoint onto the carabiner. Drew knew that a simpler method would have been to attach the rope directly to the sling, but the rope, like the sling, was made from nylon, and nylon had a dangerously low friction point. If the rope and the sling were allowed to rub against each other, the weight of a climber could easily make them overheat and snap. This way, the metal carabiner acted as a buffer, reducing the heat.

Almost ready. Arlene tied a sling around her legs and waist in a pattern that resembled a diaper. She hooked a carabiner through it, at her crotch. Drew did the same, borrowing equipment from her pack. As night enveloped them, he was nonetheless able to see her shadowy outline, athletic and lithe. His love for her intensified.

She hooked the doubled rope into the carabiner, looped the two strands of rope around her left shoulder, down her back, and around to the right side of her waist. The carabiner at her crotch would thus take the main stress of the rope. Her shoulder and back would absorb the remainder of the stress, and if she needed to, she could use her right hand to press the rope against her waist, applying a brake.

"I'll take the pack and go first," she whispered, "There's a ledge sixty feet down. I'll rig another anchor. And another one farther down after that. It takes three separate rappels to reach the bottom."

"I know."

"Then you still remember how to do this?" She seemed to grin.

"I had a good teacher."

"Flattery. My, my."

She was gone, walking backward off the cliff, gripping the section of the rope above the carabiner, pressing the other section against her waist. He imagined the graceful ease with which she would drop. She'd always enjoyed a free-fall. A piece of cloth tied near the end of her rope would warn her when she would soon run out of rope. Then she would stop and rig yet another anchor.

That would be the dangerous part, searching for a solid spot on this brittle cliff. But after that, all she needed to do was balance herself on the ledge while she unhooked the rope from the sling around her crotch. She'd free the knotted ends of the rope and pull down on one side, tugging the other side up through the anchor at the top of the cliff, then down to her. She'd reposition the rope, this time on the new anchor, and continue her descent.

Anxious, his affection adding to his worry about her safety, he crouched, gently touching the rope, feeling it start to move. Okay. He relaxed temporarily. She would set up the other anchor. Soon, lower, she'd set up the third. When he judged that she'd had sufficient time to reach the bottom, to step back from the cliff and avoid any rocks that he might dislodge when he came down, only then would he begin.

Five minutes - that was all the time he'd need. He wondered what the surveillance team was doing. They must have become suspicious. Professionals, they presumably had an infrared scope that allowed them to see that Arlene had disappeared. They'd approach to investigate. If I don't get there soon...

He quit counting, secured his rope, turned his back to the cliff, and as his stomach soared toward his throat, he dropped.

Chapter 12.

He stepped on a loose chunk of rock. It tilted. Lurching sideways, fighting for balance, he heard it clatter in the dark. He froze.

He'd reached the bottom. Behind the Horn, the wall of the neighboring bluff loomed close behind him, creating a thicker dark. The narrow enclosure smothered him. He felt disoriented, defenseless. Where was Arlene?

The snap of a finger told him where she stood. To his left. Across from him, near the other cliff. With as little noise as possible, he started in that direction.

He realized that anyone could have made that noise. In the dark, the surveillance team might have approached the base of the Horn, assumed that Arlene would descend from the back, and waited there for her.

For me as well, he thought. He strained to see a figure in the night. Again he heard fingers snap. He pulled out his Mauser, his muscles hard with tension, stalking forward.

A scream broke the silence. Unnerving, it came from above. Drew felt a rush of air - again from above - and stumbled frantically back as a massive object plummeted past him, walloping on the rocks. Though it seemed to be heavy and solid, it made a sickening plop, like a watermelon dropped from an overpass onto a freeway. Warm liquid spattered his face. He jerked a hand to his cheek.

His surprise became shock. His shock changed to urgency, commanding him. Though he knew what had fallen, he had to find out if this was Arlene. The fear made bile rush into his mouth.

But he felt Arlene suddenly next to him. This close, he recognized her shape, her smell. Then who had...? He lunged forward, crouching with his Mauser in one hand, reaching with the other. His fingers touched bloody hair, a shattered skull, warm and sticky. He traced his hand along the torso. A man. The clothes were grimy, torn, buttons missing, a rope for a belt. The dingy clothes a wino might wear. Or someone disguised as a wino, one of the men who'd followed Arlene from her brownstone.

But how could this have happened?

As Arlene knelt beside him, he tried to think the problem through. The surveillance team must have become impatient. Suspecting that she would try to sneak down from the Horn at night, they'd split up. The wino must have tried to find a way up to the bluff behind the Horn. In turn, his partner, the well-dressed man with the earphones, had waited in case Arlene decided on the easy route and came back through the trees at the entrance to the basin.

So far, it made sense, Drew thought. The wino, hiding on top of the bluff in the dark, must have heard the scrape of our boots on the rocks when we touched down. If he leaned too close to the rim, he could have lost his balance and fallen. Easy enough to do at night.

But the explanation troubled him. It wasn't the kind of mistake you'd expect from a pro. Beside him, Arlene removed her hands from the corpse and slowly stood. He knew that she too would be trying to figure out the sequence. They didn't need - didn't dare - to discuss what had happened. The other member of the team was still in the area. Maybe up on the bluff, in fact. Maybe both men had gone up there, reasoning that the cliff behind the Horn was the logical spot for Arlene to try eluding them.

Too many variables. Too much uncertainty.

But this he did know. The falling wino's scream would have warned his partner. If the well-dressed man was in the woods at the basin's entrance, he might decide to come this way and investigate.

On the other hand, a professional wasn't supposed to allow a scream - even one from his partner - to lure him into what might be a trap.

Arlene touched his shoulder, communicating the same urgent need he felt to get away. They crossed the dark narrow chasm and stopped at the bluff behind the Horn. Behind them, the corpse made a gurgling sound, pressure forcing gas and blood from the torso.

Drew shut out the noise, concentrating on the problem he faced. Though a night climb was always difficult, the cliff behind the Horn offered one compensation. It wasn't as severely vertical as the Horn, and it offered more ledges, more outcrops. Arlene's shadowy form reached up, choosing a handhold, testing it, then raising her boot to fit it into a crack. Drew brooded. If the well-dressed man had gone with the wino up to the top of the bluff, we'll never get over the rim. We'll be pushed down here with his friend.

No, all of this felt wrong. He tugged the back of Arlene's jacket as she raised herself. She stiffened, resisting. He tugged again. She stepped back down, her indistinct face swinging toward him. He gripped her hand and used it to point away from the cliff, past the Horn, toward the entrance to the basin. He touched her hand to his chest, to hers, and again pointed past the Horn. The message, he hoped, was clear. It might be better if we went that way. She seemed to think about it. Two taps on his shoulder. Okay.

They crept from the chasm between the Horn and the bluff. If the well-dressed man was out there hidden in the dark of the woods, watching them through a night-scope, they'd be obvious targets caught in the open. But Drew had an intuition, an instinct, that the situation was even more confused than he imagined, that no bullet would pierce his chest, that he and Arlene had a better-than-even chance to get away.

They angled to the right, leaving the bluff on their flank, descending the slope of fragmented rock, entering the narrow exit from the basin. The woods they reached were still and cold but, because of their tangle, reassuring.

In keeping with their training, they stayed twenty feet apart, Drew taking the lead, shifting past deadfalls and boulders. Separated, they made less easy targets, and if a sniper shot at one of them, the other would have a chance to see the muzzle flash and return the fire. Drew felt reassured by the pistol that she'd taken from her pack.

This time, when he reached the stream, he didn't waste effort trying to find a log with which to cross, but simply waded, nervous about the inadvertent splashing sounds he made.

Then the stream was behind him, and hearing Arlene follow, he crept farther through the bushes and trees, easing his boots down on leaves that blessedly were still so soaked from yesterday's rain that they didn't crackle. With the stars to guide him, he headed east toward the two-lane road and the motorcycle he'd hidden near it.

His tension eased when he saw the blacktop. The moon had risen, casting a glow across it. The skeletal silhouette of a hydro pylon loomed against the pattern of stars to his right. When he'd arrived that morning, he'd chosen the pylon as a landmark to guide him back to where he'd hidden the chopper, and now heading right, through the bushes that flanked the road, he came to the Harley. He checked the bike; no one had tampered with it.

Still, he didn't want to start the motor and attract attention, so he walked the bike down the road, heading left of the pylon this time, soon reaching the spot where Arlene waited for him.

In the moonlight, he saw her gesture toward an overgrown lane that jutted into the woods. The bushes and saplings had been bent as if a car had gone along it. She motioned for him to follow, and thirty yards down the lane, he found the dark blue car almost indistinguishable from the forest.

It was occupied.

The well-dressed man sat motionless behind the steering wheel. A thin gash encircled the front half of his throat. The gash was deep, the obvious aftermath of powerful hands on a razor-sharp garotte. Moonlight filtered through the trees, revealing the blood that drenched the front of the dead man's overcoat.

Drew spun toward the black of the forest. The wino hadn't fallen from the cliff near the Horn! He'd been pushed! There was someone else in the forest!

Silence no longer mattered. Whoever's out there knows every move we've made.

He straddled the motorcycle, stomping down on the starter. The engine's roar broke the stillness. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Chapter 13.

Feeling Arlene's breasts against his back, her arms around his chest, he sped toward the gravel parking area where she'd left her car - a Firebird, the nameplate said, though he didn't recognize its design.

They quickly inspected it, but as with the Harley, no one had meddled. Indeed, it started the instant Arlene turned the ignition key. Its tires throwing up gravel, Arlene raced from the parking area. Drew hurried after her.

But five miles down the road, just after a hairpin turn, he let her taillights disappear while he hid in bushes beside the road, watching for anyone who followed. He waited ten minutes.

No one came. It doesn't make sense, he thought. Whoever killed those men must have seen us leave. Why aren't we being tailed? Frowning, he left his hiding place and met Arlene ten miles farther along.

"There has to be someone," she said.

"I know." He glanced along the dark road. "I never thought I'd be bothered because I wasn't being followed."

"Let's try it one more time. After the next sharp turn, pull off the road again and wait."

No car followed. Distressed, he hurried to join her.

"That's it then," she said. "Let's put some miles behind us. Stay close. I'll use back roads."

"To where?"

"You said it yourself. We need to find a place that's safe, where you can answer my questions." She sounded exhausted. "And tell me what all of this has to do with Jake."