With the gloves on, she had to fumble at the wrapper, and as she did so, Slater leaned forward in the driver’s seat and stuffed a mitten into the hole. He was afraid that if he pushed too hard, the rest of the window, crazed with a thousand fissures, would give way, but for the moment it appeared to be holding.
“How can you see around that?” Nika asked.
“Who said I could?”
So far, he hadn’t passed any other cars or trucks, which meant that the roadblock was probably already in place somewhere up ahead. But he feared that if the Vane brothers hadn’t been stopped by now, they might have found a way to slip through the net. And the unfolding of that scenario was too dreadful even to contemplate. How wide would the dragnet eventually have to be? And what kind of panic might ensue if they tried to enforce it on a much more extensive scale?
He rubbed the side of one eye, where a splinter from the tree had hit him, and turned up the heat in the ambulance. From the way Nika was hunching her small shoulders, he guessed she was still chilled.
“You should take off your boots,” he advised her, “and put your feet on the heat vent. You need to warm up.”
Removing her footgear, she propped her stockinged feet up on the dashboard, wiggling her toes. “Frank,” she said, somberly, “what happens if we do catch up to them?”
“I reason with them.”
“That’s it? That’s your plan?” She turned her head to stare out the side window. “These are not the kind of guys who listen to reason.”
Slater was aware of that, too.
“I hope you have a Plan B,” she said.
“I did take the guns from their house.”
She didn’t seem overly impressed with that plan, either, but Slater hoped it would never come to that. The roadblock was still somewhere up ahead, and he prayed that when he got there he’d see Charlie’s van pulled over on the shoulder and the Vane brothers under arrest.
He drove on, the road winding now through rougher terrain. He wondered if Eva Lantos had arrived at the containment unit in Juneau yet … and if she was still fighting for her life. It was a miracle that she had survived at all. The wolf attack could easily have killed her, and so could the viral exposure in the demolished lab, but it was a testimony to her stubborn spirit that she had not succumbed to either one. It was her hardheadedness that had convinced him to enlist her for this mission in the first place.
As he came around a bend, he saw the neighboring hills flickering in the rosy glow of highway beacons that had been set up along the road. Bobbing his head to see around the mitten in the windshield and past the network of cracks in the glass, he still caught no glimpse of a van. He had switched his one headlight to bright, and he slowed the ambulance as he saw an Army officer in a combat helmet stepping out of an armored vehicle parked in the center of the pavement. The officer had lifted both of his hands to indicate that they should stop, and if that wasn’t clear enough, two National Guardsmen were kneeling on the asphalt, with their rifles pointed at the grille of his car.
“Looks like they mean business,” Nika said.
“They should.”
Slater stopped the car and waited until the officer approached. A soldier walked to the other side, his rifle slung over one shoulder but a finger on the trigger. Both of them, he was pleased to see, were wearing gauze face masks over their mouths, latex gloves on their hands, and keeping to a safe distance. Though they had probably never imagined that they’d have to observe these protocols, at least they’d been properly trained in them.
“Okay,” the officer said, “let’s start with who you are.” He had lieutenant’s bars on his helmet, and the mask billowed out with each word. “ID, please.”
Nika passed her driver’s license over, and added, “I’m the mayor of Port Orlov.”
Reaching out his arm at full length to take and inspect the license, he said, approvingly, “You don’t look like any mayor I’ve ever seen.” Wet snow was starting to settle on his helmet.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, with the weary tone of someone who had heard that line one too many times. She took the license back.
The back doors of the ambulance were thrown open, and the soldier nosed around with the muzzle of his rifle.
Slater proffered his laminated, AFIP badge, and when the lieutenant saw the name and picture on it, he did a double take. “You’re Dr. Slater? The one running the mission?”
“Yes.” For once, inefficiency was his friend; he was still nominally in charge, it appeared.
“Then what the hell are you doing out here, and driving this piece of junk?” He surveyed the broken headlight and windshield. “You hit a moose?”
“No, but we ran into some other trouble.” He was not about to elaborate. The back doors were slammed shut again.
“What have you heard about the Vane boys?” Slater asked, taking back his ID. “Has anyone spotted them?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep an eye out for a blue Ford van. We have reason to believe they’re out in it.”
“Nothing like that’s come through here. We’ve stopped one logging truck and one old lady driving a pickup.”
“Are you sure that’s all?” Nika said, leaning toward the officer. “They must have hit this roadblock by now.”
“No, ma’am, they didn’t. We’ve been up and running since 1800 hours.”
“Then they must have gotten around it,” she muttered to Slater. “Maybe on one of the old logging trails.”
Slater didn’t doubt her.
“But even if they got around this, they can’t get around the Heron River Gorge,” she added. “It’s long and it’s wide, and there’s only one bridge across it.”
“How far ahead?” he asked her.
“Forty miles, maybe fifty.”
“Listen carefully, Lieutenant,” Slater said. Between the helmet and the face mask, all he could really see of the young man’s face was a pair of bright brown eyes. “I need you to call whoever’s in charge, and tell them to set up another roadblock at the Heron River Bridge. Tell them to do it right away, and to keep an eye out for that van.”
He put the ambulance into gear, and the lieutenant said, “Hey, wait — where do you think you’re going?”
“The bridge. Now clear the road.”
The lieutenant looked torn. “My orders are still in effect, and I’m supposed to stop all traffic in both directions.”
“And you’re doing a fine job,” Slater said. “But I’m the one in charge of this operation — you said it yourself — and I’m telling you to move your vehicle.”
Just to shut off any further debate, Slater rolled up his window and flicked the switch that activated the siren and flash bar atop the ambulance. The lieutenant hesitated, but when Slater glared at him and pointed his finger at the truck, he waved to his soldiers to move the vehicle out of the way. A couple of others peeled up a spike strip that Slater only now saw had been placed in the roadway just beyond. He was glad that he hadn’t run out of patience and simply decided to barrel through the barricade.
The moment the path was clear, he steered the ambulance through the opening and pulled the mitten out of the hole. He needed the windshield wipers more than he needed the windbreak. And once the roadblock was no longer visible even in his rearview mirror, he killed the siren and flashing lights.
“I don’t want to give the Vanes any more warning than I have to,” he said, speeding up as much as the slippery pavement and damaged car would allow.
“By now, I’m sure they’ve figured a few things out,” Nika said. “They know that somebody must be coming after them, or they wouldn’t be off-roading.”
True enough, he thought, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel and plowing on through the rising snowstorm. But did they know that the gravest danger of all was riding right along with them in their van?