The Romanov Cross: A Novel (48 page)

For a second, he wondered who would be assigned to replace him.
Whoever it was had undoubtedly already been chosen. There was no time to waste.

“Call the sheriff,” he said to Nika as he gripped the wheel with one hand and rummaged around in the console between the two front seats. “Tell him about the women, and tell him not to let anybody in or out of the Vanes’ house until a hazmat team gets there. Full precautions have to be taken.” Although they had both been as careful as they could be—indeed, he could feel a pool of sweat cooling inside the thermals he wore under the damp hazmat suit—viruses were among the sneakiest things on earth. And this one, though its primary mode of transmission was airborne, thrived in the blood and flesh and bodily fluids of its carriers.

While Nika made the call—and he could tell she was getting static from Sheriff Ray—he found in the console a pair of woolly mittens, assorted loose meds, and a petrified Almond Joy bar. When she got off, she said, “I think we’re both going to be under arrest before this is all over.”

“Been there, done that,” he said, with a half smile. “Here, have some dinner,” he said, offering her the candy bar. “You’re looking peaked.”

“Not hungry.”

“Eat it, anyway. You need to keep up your strength.” She was slouched low in her seat though maybe it was just to avoid the stiff breeze blowing through the hole that the shotgun shell had left in the windshield.

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?

Charlie’s mind was churning. He hadn’t seen a single other vehicle moving on the highway in either direction, but on a night like this, who in his right mind would be out? Only long-haul truckers would brave it, and that was only because they had to. The snow was coming down so fast, the windshield wipers were having trouble handling it, even at their top speed.

Glancing into the rearview mirror, he saw Harley huddled in the backseat, and if he thought he looked sickly before, it was worse now. His forehead was beaded with sweat, his eyes had a weird glaze, and his fingers kept picking at that damn wound on his leg; all Charlie knew was that he must have gotten into some mean shit on that island. Mean shit, which was probably infecting the whole car by now. He’d have to tell Rebekah and Bathsheba to scrub down and sanitize the whole van once he got back to Port Orlov.

With the back of his hand, Charlie checked his own forehead, and he was as cool as a cucumber. Didn’t have a cough or anything else, either. At least not so far. But if Harley
did
have something contagious, and he gave it to Charlie, there was going to be hell to pay.

A sign flashed by in the darkness, saying
NEXT FOOD AND FUEL
—
50 MILES
, and Charlie glanced at the gas gauge; he had about half a
tank left, but with the extra canisters in the back he could easily make it to Nome without stopping. He didn’t want to risk using his credit card at a service station, or showing his face at a diner. One thing he’d learned was, people remembered the guy in the wheelchair, and just in case anyone came along trying to follow his trail, he didn’t want to leave any more clues than he had to. Let ’em guess what the Vane boys were up to.

In a weird way, he found it exhilarating to be out on the road like this. It reminded him of his former life, before he’d given himself over to the Lord. When they weren’t out crabbing, he and Harley had always been off running some scam, or hijacking somebody’s boat, or burglarizing some rich bastard’s vacation home. He knew now that what he’d been doing was wrong, that he was breaking the third, or was it the fourth, commandment, the one about not stealing, but he also knew that he’d felt a rush nothing else could come close to. These days, when he was preaching and really getting into it, really feeling the Presence of the Lord, it was sort of like that.

But if he was completely honest with himself, it still wasn’t as good as cracking open somebody’s wall safe and finding a stack of hundreds inside. Why was that? It was something he would have to take up with Jesus during his next heart-to-heart.

Fumbling inside his coat, he pulled a cigarette and a Bic lighter out of his shirt pocket. With the women gone, he could sneak in a smoke. He inhaled deeply, and dropped the lighter on the passenger seat. Funny, how a cigarette could make your lungs feel bigger even as, in actual fact, it shrunk ’em up.

A gust of wind slapped the side of the van so hard it roused Harley from his stupor. “The icon,” he said, in a worried voice, “what did you do with it?”

“It’s right here in the glove compartment. Same as the cross.”

“I need it.”

“What for?” Charlie couldn’t tell if his brother was in his right mind or not.

“To save me.”

Now he knew. “How’s it gonna save you, Harley?”

“It’s got the baby Jesus on it. Jesus saved you, right?”

“Yes, He did. But you don’t need an old icon for that.”

“I do,” Harley croaked. “I need something ’cuz I’m gonna die tonight.”

Charlie had never heard his brother say anything like that, not ever, and when he looked in the rearview mirror again, he saw that Harley’s eyes were burning like black coals and his whole head was shaking.

“Nobody’s dying tonight,” Charlie said. His mind went back to the night he’d seen—imagined—the hollow-eyed man in the long coat, reaching for the cross from the backseat. He didn’t care how much this Russian stuff was worth anymore—he was starting to wish he’d never laid eyes on any of it. “As soon as we get to Nome, we’ll take you to a doctor. Get you fixed right up.”

The road was veering now, as it began to track along the rim of the Heron River Gorge. Normally, that alone—the site of the accident that had left Charlie a paraplegic for life—was enough to rattle him, even if all this other crap hadn’t been going on.

But it
was
going on, which made his apprehension just that much worse.

A sign said the bridge was coming up ahead. Huge, snow-covered hunks of granite, left by ancient glaciers, lined the shoulders like train cars waiting to be hitched.

“There’s not enough time,” Harley said. “Give me the icon now.”

“I can’t reach over that far. I’ll get it for you once we cross the bridge.”

“Too late,” Harley said, with chilling certainty. “That’ll be too late.”

The van rocked and swayed as it hit a stretch of asphalt buckled from frost heave. Every year, the highway department had to come out in the spring and repair the damage done in the winter. Once in their youth, Charlie and Harley had tried to make off with one of their road graders, before realizing that its top speed was about ten miles per hour.