Winterkill - C. J. Box [125]
He pulled his shotgun from beneath the elastic cords on the back of his snowmobile and racked the pump. Strickland stopped, puzzled.
Fire a warning shot, she had told Munker. His eyes bored holes into her, but she looked back blankly.
“Get out of the way,” Joe said, starting the engine. Both women quickly and clumsily stepped aside for him as he roared into the trees on Munker’s tracks.
As he topped the rise where he had last seen Romanowski, he looked over his shoulder at the skirmish line and compound far below. Black-clad members of the assault team stood around their disabled vehicles, some gesturing, most still. In the compound, the big roll of black smoke obscured the remains of Wade Brockius’s trailer. The rest of the compound was now empty of Sovereigns.
Thirty-three
Following the two snowmobiles through the trees was easy, and Joe did it through half-lidded eyes that were burning in their sockets and with a twelve-gauge shotgun across his lap. Munker had stayed exactly in Nate’s tracks, packing the trail even harder, and Joe knew he would gain speed on both of them.
He had no helmet, and the wind and snow tore at his exposed face and ears and pasted his hair back. He paid no attention to it, concentrating instead on the track in front of him and anticipating the first sight of Munker ahead. He had no doubts about what to do when he caught up to him. Focus was not a problem now.
He followed the tracks across an open meadow and back into the dark timber on the other side. Because he couldn’t hear anything but his own motor, he couldn’t tell if Munker had Nate in his sights or if he, like Joe, was simply following the trail.
The trees got thicker, flashing by on each side, and Joe had to slow down to stay in the track and not to hurtle into the timber. Nate had obviously tried to shake Munker by diving into the deep woods, making hairpin turns around pine trees, and ducking under low-hanging branches. The trail zigzagged through the trees, sometimes banking sharply near trunks or outcroppings.
The single thought in Joe’s mind was to find Dick Munker and kill him. He knew it would mean prison. He didn’t care. Today Agent Dick Munker of the FBI needed to die by Joe’s hand.
The terrain suddenly cleared, and the track went up the middle of a treeless hill. Joe hit his accelerator and the snowmobile whined, blindly surging up the rise.
He was going so fast, that he almost didn’t see the tracks he was following split in two as he plunged down the hill’s other side. One track had turned sharply to the right and the other plunged straight down the steep ridge into a dark and tangled mass of violently uprooted trees. Out of control, Joe rocketed down the slope, trying to avoid the trees while decelerating with one hand and crushing the handbrake with the other. He caught a glimpse of a smashed snowmobile below him, pieces of it scattered in the tangle of downed trees, and the black shape of a body in the snow. The body was sprawled out flat on its back, as if making a snow angel. When Joe’s machine finally stopped, his left front ski was six inches from Dick Munker’s head. Hanging in the air directly in front of him, where his windshield should have been, was the broken-off end of an upturned lodgepole pine that would have skewered Joe if he hadn’t been able to stop.
Joe killed the engine and climbed off his snowmobile. He instantly sunk into the snow to his waist. Using a heavy-legged swimming motion, he approached Dick Munker.
It was clear from the two sets of tracks what had happened. Munker had followed Romanowski’s trail over the ridge and plunged down into the maw of a violent forest blowdown. Trunks and branches had been wrenched and snapped, and were nakedly exposed. A stout branch had impaled the hood of Munker’s snowmobile and thrown Munker into the blowdown. Romanowski had no doubt led him to this spot deliberately.
Munker’s eyes were on Joe as he waded to him. Joe detected no movement from Munker other than in those eyes. Only when he was practically on top of Munker