The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (32 page)

There was a cardboard tray of mineral water, the bottles still sheathed inside their plastic covering. Milton stripped it away, opened a bottle and drank down a handful of the amoxicillin and the painkillers, then finished the water.

He stripped to his waist and, moving carefully so as not to tip out the maggots, he peeled off the dressing. The maggots wriggled inside the wound, always moving. It was difficult to say how much good they had done but, as he looked at it, he thought that there was less of the blackened, decaying flesh. He tipped the insects into his hand, washed out the wound with another bottle of water, and then applied the mupirocin cream. When he was done, he tipped the maggots back in and covered them with a fresh dressing, binding it tight with adhesive tape.

He looked around again.

One wooden crate caught his attention. He heaved it away from the wall. Stencilled letters on the side read CORPS OF ENGINEERS – US ARMY. He knelt down and used the kitchen knife to loosen the tacks that fixed the lid to the frame. He worked two of them out, slipped his fingers into the gap and yanked back, splintering the pine and tearing the lid off.

Sticks of dynamite sat inside, packed neatly. Twenty sticks, forty percent nitro. He guessed that Callow and the others had stolen the explosives for their bank jobs, just in case they needed to blow a vault door to get at their spoils. It was good fortune that it was all still here. Still dry, too, still ready to be used.

Maybe his luck was changing.

There was a box of safety fuses slipped inside the crate. Each fuse ended with a nonelectrical blasting cap. He emptied them out onto the floor and attached one to each stick. He guessed each fuse would burn at the standard rate of a foot every thirty seconds. Plenty of time for what he needed.

He took eight of the sticks and shoved them into his pockets, four in each.

Now, he was going to need a fire.

There was plenty of tinder in the shed: old newsprint and the brown paper that had been packed with the dynamite. The crate that had stored the dynamite would be easy to break into kindling. There was plenty for what he had in mind.

The compound bow was still hanging from the nail on the wall. He took it down and inspected it. It was an expensive piece of kit, at least a thousand dollars. It used a levering system comprised of cables and pulleys to bend the limbs and tighten the bowstring. The bowstring was applied to cams, each of which had cables attached to the opposite limb. He drew back the string, causing the cams to turn. The set-up required less force to bend the limbs and tighten the string than a recurve bow or a longbow.

Considering the state of his arm, that was fortunate.

He stood the bow on the floor. There was a quiver with eight arrows inside. He took that, too.

Now, he needed to eat.

How long did he have?

Not long. He would have to be quick.

The remains of the deer were out of the question. It had decayed badly, and it was infested with maggots. He looked at the shelves and found packets of trail mix, fruit roll-ups, a box of energy bars, crisp breads and tins of beans. He needed calories, so he ate everything he could find, opening the cans with his utility knife and using it to spoon the beans into his mouth. He washed it all down with another bottle of water.

He felt a little better. The painkillers had numbed the pain from his arm, and his belly was full.

Better.

He was ready.

He gathered the things that he needed and hurried across the camp to the adit that led into the darkened maw of the mine. As he reached the steps, he fancied he heard the sound of a dog barking.

He hurried inside.

THE DOGS yelled and yammered and dragged Walker Price down the slope. Lundquist and the other six men followed behind them. He felt his pulse racing until he could feel his heart slamming in his chest. Milton was here. The dogs knew it.

He
knew it.

“Eyes open,” he called out. “This is one slippery bastard.”

He had decided that it was too dangerous to try to climb the falls. There was no way of knowing if Milton was still up there, waiting at the top with George Pelham’s gun. He couldn’t have many rounds left to fire, but he wouldn’t need many. As soon as a man popped over that lip, he was liable to have the top of his head shot off. Lundquist wasn’t prepared to take the risk.

He had split the party. He had ordered Randy Watts and Archie McClennan to stay back and guard the falls in case Milton decided to wait for them to leave and then tried to climb down again and slip behind them. Randy and Archie were good men, solid and reliable, and Lundquist had sent them back into the tree line so that they wouldn’t be visible from the top. If Milton did try to descend, they would shoot him.

He had led the other seven men as they had retraced their steps. Walker Price knew the terrain, and he had directed them east, following the line of the ridge for a mile until they reached a draw that cut up through the ridge all the way to the plateau on the top. It was still steep, and Lundquist was sweating at the end of it, but at least they were up. The diversion had taken them ninety minutes. Lundquist was frustrated, but it had been necessary. Price had assured him that there was nothing else like the falls between here and the lake, no other feature of the landscape that Milton could use against them. They doubled back to the falls, but the dogs caught the scent before they got there, dragging them back up to the north.

To the old mine.

Lundquist knew that was Milton’s final destination.

It had to be.

“Michael,” he called out.

His boy jogged across to him.

“Yes, sir?”

“The mine. What did you boys have up there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Guns.”

“Shotguns. Milton used one to cover us on the way back.”

“Does he know that the others are there?”

“Found them all.”

“So he’ll have one?”

“Won’t be able to use them.” He grinned. “He disabled them. Took the barrels off.”

“Anything else? You have a rifle? A handgun?”

“No.”

“Nothing with longer range?”

“Didn’t need anything like that.”

“Ammo?”

“Just shotgun shells.”

All right,
he thought
. Assume that all he has is a handgun and a limited number of rounds.

There were eight of them. They were all armed. Lundquist had a rifle. Michael had a rifle, too, and the army had trained him to be an excellent shot. He’d had plenty of practice, out there in the sandpit, and he had been given a medal for one shot in Iraq, plugging a raghead from a thousand yards. They would stay behind in the tree line and cover the others going in. It would be a turkey shoot. The men would flush Milton out of cover, and him and his boy would pick him off at range.

The trail led them down and around, and then the trees thinned out, and he saw the lake and the old mine buildings laid out before him. The old place hadn’t changed in forty years. He looked out at the lake, the wind curling the surface into spume-topped breakers and the rain hammering into it. There were the two huts backed up against the tall shoulder of bedrock that hemmed in the lake on its western border, one of them overwhelmed by the water. The buildings were almost hidden by the trees and underbrush around them, a smothering blanket of vegetation. He saw the fire pit that the boys had been using.

“Stop,” he called out.

The men did as they were told. The dogs yipped and growled, frustrated to be held back so close to their quarry. Lundquist gestured that the men should gather round.

“You sure he’s down there?” he asked Price.

The man nodded down at his dogs. “
They
are. Look at ’em. That’s good enough for me.”

“If he is,” Lundquist said to the others, “this is the end of the road for him. He’s got the cliff to the west and the water at his back. There’s nowhere else for him to go.”

“What are we going to do, sir?”

“Me and Michael will stay up here with the rifles. The rest of you, you go down into the camp and find him. Search the huts, the trees at the back, all the way down to the water. He’s in there somewhere.”

“With a gun.”

“A handgun, with maybe a couple of rounds. He pops up, I promise you he’ll get shot. I can shoot, and Michael was a sniper in the army.”

“That don’t fill me with confidence,” Larry Maddocks said, “the mess he’s made of things already, dragging us all the way out here in weather like this.”

Michael faced up to Larry and took a step closer to him. Lundquist put a hand on his shoulder. “Enough, Larry. And calm down, Michael. You know what Milton can do. You think we stand a better chance if we start bickering among ourselves?”

“Yes,” Larry said. “I do know. That’s why I’d be much happier if it was me staying up here and you and him going down there.”

“That’s the way we’re going to do it. You got a problem with it, Private?”

Larry sighed in frustration. “No, sir.”

“Where are your bikes?” Lundquist asked.

“Around back,” Tom Chandler answered. “There’s a grove. We put them in there.”

“Does Milton know where they are?”

“Probably. He had a good look around.”

“Well, you need to keep that in mind. He might run.”

Michael took his rifle. It was a lever-action Winchester Model 94, and he already had a cartridge in the chamber. “If he gives me a clear shot, I guarantee you, I will hit him.”

MILTON SAW them come down the slope. There were six of them. The man with the dogs was in the lead, his animals pulling hard at their leash. Tom Chandler was behind him, a shotgun aimed out ahead, and behind him came another four men. Milton had counted ten of them when he had looked down from the top of the falls. Lundquist must have left some of them back there in case he tried to double back. How many, though? Two? Three? Four? And where was he? Had he given himself that duty, the safer option? Lundquist hadn’t struck Milton as craven, but maybe he was more bark than bite. In Milton’s experience, it happened that way sometimes. You never could really tell until the chips were down and the bullets started to fly.

Didn’t matter.

Milton would find him wherever he was.

The lead man slowed at the fringe of the tree line, pulling back to halt the dogs.

Deep breaths. Milton picked up the bow and held it in his left hand. He stood at a right angle to the target, his feet shoulder-width apart with his back foot slightly forward. He slipped an arrow into the rest, pushing it back until the nock clicked into the bowstring. He straightened his bow arm, raising it until it was parallel with the ground, and, using his upper back, drew the bowstring straight back. The effort of holding his left arm stiff sent a shudder of pain across his numbed muscles, and the bow jerked off to the right. He gritted his teeth, tried to ignore the pain, corrected the aim, and pushed his arm out to the target.

They were still in cover, just among the trees. Milton watched as another man came into view, just for a moment. The man had a rifle. Visibility through the rain was dreadful, but Milton recognised the bulky frame.

Lundquist.

He disappeared again.

The dogs barked excitedly.

The man with the lead started forwards, the hounds drawing him down the slope at an easy jog. The five other men followed.

Shotguns.

Pistols.

Milton held the bowstring up against his cheek and nose and aligned the sight with his target.

He opened his hand, and the arrow raced free.

LUNDQUIST LAY flat on the slope, the rifle laid out ahead of him so that he could sight down the barrel. Michael was alongside him in a similar position. He thought he had imagined the flash of movement. It was so fast and so stunningly quiet that he didn’t register what it was until Walker Price tottered backwards, his hands clutching the long shaft that had suddenly appeared in his chest. He released the leash, and the dogs sprang away, then stopped, confused. Price weaved around until he was facing back up the slope. Lundquist saw the fletching on the shaft and realised, with horror, that it was an arrow.

Michael had seen it too. “Oh shit,” he gasped. “Oh
shit
.”

“
What
, Michael?”

“I forgot that.”

“You forgot
what
?”

“My bow. He’s found my bow.”

“You had a
bow
down there?”

“Sure. We were hunting.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a bow!”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what? You didn’t
think
. You
never
think.”

Walker collapsed onto his knees, and his dogs scattered, howling.

The other five men were halfway between the safety of the tree line and the shacks that made up the camp. Walker had been in the lead, so they had all seen what had just happened to him. They were a little closer to the camp. They should have made for shelter there, but they all assumed that Milton was in that vicinity, and their instinct was to go back in the direction from which they arrived. At least they knew that there was safety there.

Lundquist knew that was wrong.

“No!” he screamed. “Keep going! Get into the camp!”

Larry Maddocks broke first. He turned, but as he tried to push off, his foot skidded through a sheet of mud, and his leg flew out from beneath him. He splashed into the mud, face first, and, as he pushed himself up and scrambled on hands and knees, a second arrow streaked through the air. His slip saved his life. The arrow missed him by fractions, flying into the trees.

Someone shouted out a strangled, “Fuck!”

Maddocks ran for cover.

Thomas Chandler, Leland Mulligan, Dylan Fox, and Harley Ward were in the open.

“Get into the camp!” Lundquist yelled as loud as he could.

Michael stared down the sight of his rifle, sweeping it left and right. “You see him?”

“Get into the camp!” he screamed at the men. “He can see you there!”

Tom Chandler turned first and headed the other way, going for the shacks. The other three followed.