Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [81]
They were like ducks in a shooting gallery, traipsing up the steep road one by one, two bright orange jerseys in the lead, followed by Stephens’s red one and the royal blue on Giancarlo. They were wearing the brightest colors in the mountains.
They heard another shot, then another. Zak felt his heart thumping and looked down at the wristwatch heart monitor strapped to his handlebar: 180 beats per minute. If he kept this up much longer he wouldn’t be able to ride at all. A bullet hit a wall of rocks to their left and whirred off into the distance like a Fourth of July firework. “You think from that distance a bullet still has any punch left? You think it would kill someone?”
“Not real dead,” said Muldaur. “Just sort of dead.”
“You see the top?”
“No. Do you?”
“I don’t think there is a top.”
Making a tremendous effort on foot, Stephens had almost caught Zak, while behind them Giancarlo was steadily losing ground. Breathless and choking on his words, Stephens pushed his bicycle alongside Zak. “There’s a couple of old roads that veer off to the left. They go to old mining claims. There won’t be anyplace to hide.”
“Hide?” said Muldaur. “I was thinking more along the lines of climbing up this wall and dumping boulders down on them.”
Stephens didn’t have enough breath to reply. Zak said, “You find a spot, I’m with you.”
“Shit!” gasped Muldaur. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“What is it?” Zak asked, pedaling harder, putting the pressure on until he caught Muldaur, who was twenty-five feet ahead now. The road was especially rutted here. Finally, he pulled up alongside Muldaur. They were beginning to sound like racehorses running themselves to death.
When Zak saw the Styrofoam shards sticking out of Muldaur’s helmet, he realized his friend had been hit. He didn’t see any blood, but something had obviously nicked Muldaur’s helmet above his right temple. “You okay?”
“Those fuckers almost got me.”
Another bullet slammed into the rocks above their heads. After that it was all pumping legs, heavy breathing, and their own heartbeats thumping in their ears. After several more minutes the pitch of the road decreased, and Zak and Muldaur were able to drop down a couple of cogs, quickly outpacing Stephens, who was still pushing his bicycle.
34
Just when Jennifer thought things couldn’t get any worse, Fred ran down to the water, where he knelt next to a thick tree, lined his rifle up alongside the trunk, and fired across the narrow lake and high up at the mountain. She couldn’t get her mind off the dead dog in the back of the truck or the way his eyes seemed to be looking at her. At least the dead man in the back of Kasey’s Porsche was wrapped in a blanket so she couldn’t see his eyes. Fred fired again and again, saying “bastards” after each shot. “Bastards.”
While the others headed up the mountain on the north side of the lake, she’d driven the Ford down a side trail that led seventy-five yards through a thick stand of trees to a small, muddy beach near the west end. The lake was so blue and gorgeous and pristine, she could hardly believe it was up here amid all this awfulness. Judging by the marks in the dirt, plenty of other trucks had at one time or another parked where she put the Ford. Along the shoreline she saw bits of fishing gear, a sinker with some line attached, a forgotten cherry bobber.
“What are you doing, Fred?”
Squeezing off another shot, then another, he said, “Bastards.”
“What?”
When she stood behind him and traced his line of vision onto the mountainside, she realized he was pointing the gun at a scar on the mountain that traversed the slope on the other side of the lake at a steep angle from left to right, a scar she at first thought was maybe made by glaciers. Then she saw