Without Yakecan . . . or Schweitzer—Mankiller still had a hard time keeping the identity straight—pulling the sledge was twice as hard. Ghaznavi grunted alongside her, not complaining at least but clearly having a tough time with the added weight of the supplies. The sled wiggled and fishtailed as Mankiller tried to increase or decrease her pull to keep steady with Ghaznavi. At last, she could take no more.
She stopped, put her hands on her hips. “Look, I know you’re tired an’ all, but you gotta pull even with me.”
Ghaznavi looked at her boots. “I’m trying.”
Mankiller swallowed her frustration. “I know it, but . . . just try to match my step, is all. Ain’t no time to rest yet, but we’re almost to—”
“I know,” Ghaznavi growled. “Look, I’ll try harder to match your pace. Just maybe go a little lighter. Now let’s move; we’re wasting time here.”
Ghaznavi grumbled under her breath as they started pulling again, but she was more careful now, and they made better progress. Mankiller couldn’t blame her for being edgy. She kept straining her hearing, terrified that any minute, gunshots would ring out behind them as the Director’s flanking force followed their trail and caught up. She was glad they’d done what they had, but she’d have been lying if she said she wasn’t also terrified. If their plan worked, it meant that she’d be bringing the full wrath of the Cell down on her head. She’d do it, and do it without a second thought, but that didn’t mean that the idea appealed to her.
She looked over at Ghaznavi, realized with a start that this might be the last living person she got to see before she met her end. She looked at the set of Ghaznavi’s jaw and grimaced. “Hey, thanks,” she offered.
“For what?” Ghaznavi asked without looking up.
“For comin’ to help. For pullin’ the sledge. I dunno, for everythin’, I guess.”
Now the SAD Director did look up, eyes wide with surprise. She stammered, “Well . . . uh . . . you’re welcome.”
They moved on again in awkward silence until Mankiller suddenly stopped short.
Ghaznavi jerked in her harness, stared daggers at Mankiller. “First you tell me to pull even with you; now what the he—”
Mankiller silenced her with a wave. “Heard somethin’.”
Ghaznavi froze, squinting into the distance. The trees were thick around them, and the packed snow that passed for a track disappeared over a rise less than twenty feet away. Mankiller struggled out of the ropes and turned back to the tarps.
“What are you doing?” Ghaznavi whispered.
Mankiller didn’t answer, feeling around underneath the tarp until her hand closed around the butt of one of her grandfather’s hunting rifles, an ancient Winchester Model 70. She fished it out, grabbed the box of .30-06 ammunition beside it, and fumbled out a round. The action was clumsy and rushed, sending much of the box’s contents cascading into the snow.
She chambered a round and brought the weapon up to the low ready. The 70 had no magazine, and she didn’t have time to go fishing after loose bullets in the snow. She had one shot; she had better make it count.
Ghaznavi whispered something, but Mankiller silenced her with a wave and then motioned for her to get down. She didn’t wait to see if the SAD Director complied; she was already tuning out the world, bringing her front sight post into focus, drawing a bead on the top of the rise where’d she’d heard the noise.
She heard it again, rasping breath, crunching footsteps. Whoever was coming wasn’t bothering to be quiet about it.
Mankiller took a knee. A hiker running from a bear would sound like that. So would a refugee from Fort Resolution, and so would one of the Cell’s operators who’d been ordered to run up the trail to intercept them before they turned off it. She couldn’t take any chances. She dialed in her aim and waited.
A figure crested the rise. A man in a parka and boots, a carbine slung across his chest. Not a hiker running from a bear, not with armament like that. Mankiller sighted in and eased the slack out of the trigger.
She should have just shot. Would have been the sensible thing. But the old cop’s protocol held her tightly in its grip. Even now, when she was more soldier than cop, when this was more a military evolution than a police one. It might get her killed, but to fail it was a kind of living death, and to be honest, she was dead anyway. Might as well go down being true to herself.
And so, Wilma Mankiller didn’t fire. Instead, she shouted, “Police! Drop your weapon!”
The figure didn’t drop his weapon. Instead, he fell on his face in the snow, hacking and gasping as if his heart would burst. Mankiller came off her sights, unfocused her vision.
And recognized him instantly.
“Ollie!” She raced to his side. “What the hell are you doin’ out here?”
Calmut must have been running flat out for a long time, because it took him a solid minute of coughing to get enough breath to speak.
“Sherr . . . if. God. I been runnin’ . . . Thought I wouldn’a found you.”
“Ollie, calm down and just breathe. Are you hurt?”
“Got a round . . . in my leg,” he managed, tapping his snow pants.
“You ran all this way with a round in your leg? Have you lost your mind? What if it cuts your femoral, you dumb shit!”
Ghaznavi had taken off her harness and joined them, bringing one of the first aid kits from under the tarp. “If he’s here, that means Fort Resolution has been overrun.”
Mankiller felt her stomach turn over. She put her hands on Calmut’s shoulders. “That true, Ollie? They take the town?”
Calmut shook his head. “No, ma’am. They came again once more, but we hung on. Lost a coupla more. They got Freddie. That Chinese fella who was stayin’ with . . .”
“Ollie. We’ll deal with the casualties later. If the Fort’s holdin’ on, what the hell are you doin’ out here? Why’d you run all the way with a bullet in your leg? You left all those people holdin’ on by themselves? They got an army to hold off and you were the man to help ’em do it!”
“No army,” Calmut spat.
“Whaddya mean, there’s no army?” Mankiller’s voice went cool.
“That’s what I came ta warn ya. They up and left.”
“They up and left?” Ghaznavi asked. “Maybe they got tired of being repulsed.”
“That ain’t it,” Calmut said. “I saw ’em goin’ up out past the lakeshore, same way you went. They musta figured out where your Grampy was at. Came to warn you. Thought for sure they’d have caught you by now.”
“When did they set out, Ollie?” Mankiller stood, panic threatening to rise at the back of her throat.
“Dunno, maybe yesterday? Hard ta think now.”
Mankiller returned to the sledge, started collecting the bullets she’d let tumble in the snow.
“Sherriff, what are you doing?” Ghaznavi asked. “They’re behind us.”
“That’s right,” Mankiller said, “and I’m going to meet them.”
“Why?” Ghaznavi asked. “We’re past them. They’re heading to your grandfather’s place.”
“They are if they know exactly where it is,” Mankiller said, “and I pray that they do. ’Cause if they don’t, they’ll be spreadin’ out right where we left Grampy and Jim.”
The sledge tracks might fool a human who was out in the frozen hinterlands of the Northwest Territory for the first time. But she had seen what the Cell’s Director could do. If he was out there, then Grampy was as good as caught.