Which is what he was.
“Look out!” she yelled. Gil had recovered enough to pick up a rifle and was aiming it at the victor. There was a shot, but it was Gil who fell.
From the kitchen came a man with a pistol held in front of him. Evans recognized him, Bartlett Police Chief Solomon. He was followed by a snow-encrusted Todd.
“Hold it right there,” the Chief said to the one gang member left standing. “Christ! What’s been going on here? It looks like the Valentine’s Day massacre!”
Todd picked up one of the rifles.
“Are you alright, Mr. Carver?” the Chief asked, swiveling his pistol expecting other masked men to appear.
Wally looked around: Bob crutching himself back in a chair; Frances sitting up. “Yeah, alive. Though Cilla...”
“Todd!” said Cilla. “Is Kurt...?”
“He’s alright, Cilla. But you!” He stared at her red-splotched front.
“I’ll be okay,” a weak voice belying her words. “How did you get here?”
“Mountain Rescue dropped me at the police station. The phones are out. The Chief decided to come along in my plow while I told you. Like everybody else, he’s been working on where those tanks are.”
“No, don’t you move!” said the Chief waving his pistol at a hulking Frank, who was reaching for Gil’s rifle. Todd kicked it away, then started picking up other automatic weapons.
“We know where they are, Todd,” said Cilla. “We know everything now. There are three tanks at Bob Gold’s house, safe under refrigeration.”
“But the ones on the mountain. We never found them.”
“Yes we did. I was leaning on them early this morning.”
“I was with you this morning!” said Todd.
“Not when I was sitting outside the AMC hut near the summit of Washington.”
“Why didn’t you say something to Kurt and me?”
“I didn’t know, not then. But later Grecco said something about `lakes’ being more important than rivers. And just a few minutes ago I was reminded the telescope in the Yankee building was pointed out the window at that AMC hut.”
“The Lakes of the Clouds hut! That’s where they are?”
“Sitting against the building like propane gas tanks.”
“Is this all The Nutcracker’s gang?” asked the Chief.”
“I’ll bet they’re the important ones. Except for a man named Carlos, and the FBI knows about him,” said Cilla, with the beginnings of a smile. “There may be a little difficulty with some Russians, but they’re only foot soldiers.”
“It’s astounding! Mrs. Rogers, do you know what you’ve done?” exclaimed the Chief. “You’ve brought down The Nutcracker.” The enormity overwhelmed him. “My God, you’ve saved New England!”
“No,” said Cilla. “But I can tell you who did, a man who was bound and taken out into the desert to die, and not only got away, but found where the tanks were hidden and destroyed the Nutcracker’s gang. Because of him I’m still alive, and I’ve made a mess of my clothes with ketchup from Wally’s kitchen making it look like blood, at least in candlelight. What do you have to say to that, Frank?”
“We’ll get you new ones,” promised Hudson, taking off his ski mask.
Chapter 46
There was a moment no one said anything
“Jesus, it’s Hudson!” burst out Bob Gold, the first to recover. “God, I’m sorry! I gave you quite a clout.”
“Yeah,” said the former Frank, his arm around Cilla. “You can buy the Ben Gay.”
“Well, sit down, sit down,” said the doctor. “You’ve had a terrible fight.”
“I will,” said Hudson. “Give a husband back from a business trip a little time with his wife.”
“You can have that later,” barked Wally. “I want to know how you pulled this off, And why the hell you didn’t let us know you were okay, instead of having us wander all over the damn country looking for you.”
“I was a bit busy,” said Hudson. He and Cilla sat on the couch, not letting go of each other.
Chief Solomon, waiting for backup to lug away Cabral’s body, and having finished tying up the rest of the gang, broke in to announce the storm was letting up, and he was optimistic he’d have the house clear soon.
“I’ve got a few questions too, Hudson,” said Cilla. “Back at the ski area, how could you have believed I’d ever leave you?”
“Never did,” said Hudson, stroking her hair. “You’d had a blow to your head; I was just passing time until you came to your senses.”
She sat up to look at him. “That’s what you did! You stroked my hair when you cut me loose in the Yankee Building. Why didn’t you let me know it was you? We could have worked together!”
“Didn’t know you were right in the head yet,” said Hudson with a grin. “I still hadn’t found the tanks, and I couldn’t risk the commotion of you reading me the riot act with the whole gang listening in. What were you doing there anyway?”
“Todd, Kurt and I were looking for the dispersal area. I remembered what Cabral said back in the library about ‘three bearing gifts to a field in Bethlehem’, changing one little word. That word was ‘to.’
“The three were coming from a field, Mt. Field in the town of Bethlehem, New Hampshire, bearing gifts of the poisonous pods. And the ‘three’ doing the bearing are the Ammonoosuc, which goes into the Connecticut River, the Pemigewasset that joins with the Merrimac and the Saco River, which flows to the Maine coast. I looked at maps of the Presidential Range in the Haystack office and, from what I could tell, it seemed obvious that only Mt. Washington would drain into all three rivers, which in turn flow through nearly all of New England. But I just had a look at a map at AMC and I don’t believe Washington does. I think only Mt. Field, in the entire White Mountains, drains into all three. So just one dispersal area needed. Pods seeded in the snows of Mt. Field, come spring, would float down these waterways through populated areas, wiping out hundreds of thousands as they melted.” She turned to Todd, who was sitting closer to Loni than seemed necessary. “You said Kurt was okay. How bad is okay?”
“He’s in Memorial Hospital, but sitting up and hasn’t gotten off the phone to Haystack.”
“Why did they let you live, Cilla?” asked Todd. “You’d put some hurt on them. They couldn’t have felt good about you.”
“I wondered about that too, Todd,” she replied. “I think I was to be the hostage to silence you and Kurt if they didn’t catch you.”
“Hey Hudson,” growled Wally, impatiently. “Back in Arizona, how the hell did you get away from Frank and change places with him.”
Hudson smiled thoughtfully, remembering. “Frank got careless. He felt since he’d tied my hands that I was no danger to him. Problem was, he’d tied them in front of me. When he turned to get out his knife, I looped them over his head, and squeezed. That kind of took the wind out of him, and made my plans for me. Frank was full of himself in the ambulance on the way to the desert; boasted it was his brother’s plan to extort the money, and Frank’s bugs that would be the weapon. He was going to meet up with the gang his brother had assembled after our little business was finished. I found plane tickets on his body and the name Grecco Cabral. So if I couldn’t find them, let them find me. Frank’s sombrero was enough identification when they met me at Logan Airport.”