Winter Prey

pistol. The pocket was sealed with Velcro, so he could get at it quickly enough once he’d shed his gloves . . . one thousand six, one thousand seven, one thousand eight. Seconds rolling away like a slow heartbeat.
    Radio voice: Don’t see him, don’t see him.
    Lucas slowed, Climpt closed from behind. One thousand thirty-eight, one thousand thirty-nine  . . .
    Lucas rolled forward, straining to see. His headlight beam was cupped, shortened by the snow. Looking into it was like peering into a foam plastic cup. They hit a hump, swooped down over the far side, Lucas absorbing up the lurch with his legs, beginning to feel the ride in his thighs. One thousand sixty  . . . Lucas rolled the accelerator back, slowed, slowed . . .
    There.
    Red flash just ahead.
    Lucas hit the brake, leaned left, dumped his speed in a skid, stayed with the sled, got it straight, headlight boring in on Helper’s sled . . . and Helper himself.
    Helper stood behind his snowmobile, caught in the headlight. Climpt had gone right when Lucas broke left, came back around, catching Helper in his lights, fixing him in the crossed beams. Lucas ripped his gloves off, had the pistol . . .
    Helper was running. He was on snowshoes, running toward the treeline above the creek. Couldn’t take a sled in there, too dense. Lucas hit the accelerator, pulled closer, closer. Helper looking back, still wearing his helmet, face mask a dark oval, blank.

    The Iceman lumbered toward the treeline, but the sound of the other snowmobiles was growing; then the lights popped up and suddenly they were there, careening through the deep snow. The lead sled swerved toward him while the other broke away.
    He lifted his pistol, fired a shot, and the sled swerved and the passenger dumped off. The other sled broke hardthe other way, spinning, trying to miss the fallen man, out of control.
    The Iceman kept running, running, his breath beating in his throat, tearing his chest, running blindly with little hope, looking back.

    The muzzle blast was like lightning in the dark. Lucas cut left, came off the sled. Stunned, he thrashed for a moment, got upright, snow in his eyes and mouth, sputtering, put too much weight on one foot, crunched through to the next layer of snow, got to his knees, the .45 coming up, felt Climpt spinning past him.
    Helper was at the treeline, barely visible, nothing more than a sense of motion a hundred feet away.
    Lucas fired six shots at him, one after another, tracking the motion, firing through brush and brambles, through alder branches and small barren aspen. The muzzle flash blinded him after the first shot and he fired on instinct, where Helper should have been. And where was Climpt, why wasn’t he . . . ?
    And then the M-16 came in, two bursts at the treeline.
    Radio: Gunfire, we got gunfire.
    Carr: What’s happening, what’s happening?

    Snowshoes. They’d need the snowshoes.
    Lucas’ sled had burrowed into a snowdrift. He started for it, then looked back at Helper’s sled, saw the yellow-haired girl. She was on the snow, trying to get to her feet. Struggling. Hurt?
    Lucas turned toward her, pushed the transmit button:
    “He’s on foot—heading up toward the road—he’s in the woods—we got the kid. She’s here—we’re on the creek just below the bridge. Watch out for him. We shot up around him, he could be hit.”
    Ginny Harris was squatting next to Helper’s snowmobile, her hair gold-yellow in the lights of the snowmobiles, focused on the woods where Helper had gone. As Lucasran up, struggling with the knee-deep snow, she turned her head and looked up at him, eyes large and feral like a trapped fox’s.

    The yellow-haired girl crouched by the sled as the man on the first sled fired a series of shots into the wood. He looked menacing, a man all in black, the big pistol popping in his hand. Then there was a loud ratcheting noise from the man on the second sled, the stutter of flame reaching out toward her man like God’s finger.
    The first man said something to her, but she couldn’t hear him. She could see his lips moving, and his hand came up. Reaching out? Pointing a gun? She rolled.

    She rolled away from him and he called, “You’re okay, okay,” but she kept rolling and her hand came up with what looked like a child’s shiny chrome compact.
    A .22, a fifty-dollar weapon, a silly thing that could do almost nothing but kill people who made mistakes. He was leaning forward, his hand toward her,