Glass Tiger
- Автор: Горес Джо
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 978-1-84724-072-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Glass Tiger». Краткое содержание книги:
The sunlight through pine boughs felt warm on his back. His clothes started to steam. He shut his eyes. He slept.
Walt Greene burst in. ‘Old guy runs the Casa Loma store had a break-in last night. Also at the AQUA River Tours facility in the same building. The perp stole dried food and water and first-aid stuff. He also stole a car an overnight camper had left parked by the store.’
‘How far is it from Casa Loma to Kestrel’s cabin?’
‘Couple of miles.’
‘Shit! Did you get out a stolen vehicle report?’
‘Didn’t have to. We found the car abandoned by the Tuolemne River, down five miles of the damnedest road you’ve ever seen. That’s the spot where AQUA River Tours puts in their river-rafting rubber boats.’
Hatfield demanded sharply, ‘Why is that significant?’
‘Janet Kestrel is a river-rafting guide with AQUA. Arness says Thorne came around yesterday morning looking for her.’
A major screw-up. In their rush to get Kestrel’s home address, they hadn’t asked the Groveland postmaster where she worked. Thorne had. That’s how he could have beaten them to Kestrel — if he had. He could have waited for her at AQUA Tours, alerted her to the fact that the FBI was looking for her.
‘We took Arness down to the river to look around. He said that a half-stove-in rowboat was buried in the weeds there for a couple of years, and now it’s gone. No oars, but even so...’
‘Okay,’ snapped Hatfield. ‘First light we start searching down both sides of the river. We’ll have to use the other river guides, and the local police and sheriffs, too. If they find Thorne alive, we push the National Security button to keep them from starting any interrogations of their own.’ He paused. ‘Meanwhile, I’m authorizing an affirmative on Compromise Authority for Thorne for everyone involved.’
Compromise Authority: shoot on sight. Shoot to kill.
36
It was mid-afternoon when Thorne was awakened by the chill. The sun was low in the sky so its rays no longer warmed him. He moved his arms and legs, checking to make sure everything was working before staggering to his feet. His side ached abominably, but ribs eventually healed themselves. Just don’t breathe deep.
For the moment, his fever had disappeared. But his meds and food also had disappeared, with the boat. So his fever might return. He started working his way downriver toward Ferry Bridge, walking on stone or gravel that would take no footprint, resting often against a tree, sitting on a rock. He ripped his stolen life jacket with his knife, draped it off a dead, half-submerged aspen, then plodded the sun down the sky to dusk.
Hatfield would discover the abandoned car. Tomorrow they would search the riverbanks, with luck find pieces of the missing boat and the life jacket. The river emptied into Don Pedro Lake, where a body could easily disappear for weeks. He could only hope that’s what they would think happened to him.
Janet might have driven straight for Canada or Mexico before they had time to get out a BOLO on the 4-Runner. But he had to assume she would be in Oakdale, waiting.
Shadow fell across him. He looked up. He was under the bridge. He waited until full dark and beyond, when there would be no traffic on Ferry Road. Scuffing out his tracks as he went, he used the bridge supports to haul himself up the steep earth slope. Get to Big Oak Flat five miles away, crawl unseen into the back of a truck at the gas station, and get taken away.
At first light, Hatfield was in a raft on the Tuolemne, wearing the wet suit, life jacket, and helmet given him by the guides. The sheriff’s men conducting the search of the river banks had found a part of the rowboat, a curved piece of wood they said was a strake, part of the boat’s keel outside the gunnel. But it wasn’t enough for Hatfield. He needed Thorne’s body, or some semi-kind of proof that he was dead.
‘Tag it and bag it and leave it for the recovery team.’
Then they found the life jacket impaled on an aspen branch.
Adrenaline surged. ‘Don’t touch it!’
They were two miles from Ferry Bridge. The ripped life jacket swirled back and forth in the foaming white water like someone waving for help. No body was found, but there was no indication that he had climbed up from under the bridge to the road. Hatfield looked up at the ring of solemn faces.
‘This man is a major National Security risk. We have to be sure he doesn’t get away. Does anyone believe he is alive?’
They looked at one another, then away. Then shook their heads. That was enough for Hatfield. They were the river search experts. But even so, he told them, ‘Search the river banks for another ten miles tomorrow, just to be sure.’
Later, he told his Hostage/Rescue team that they could abandon the search.
‘Thorne is dead. Close the book on him. Make Kestrel our priority now.’
They did. But several hours later, Perry could only report, ‘No sighting of her anywhere. Indian casinos are under a lot of scrutiny in California these days, so the Sho-Ka-Wah will notify us if she shows up. They want to cooperate.’
‘Don’t hold your breath on that one,’ said Hatfield. ‘No reports of border crossings into Mexico or Canada?’
‘None,’ said Baror, ‘but she could have walked across.’
Corwin was dead. Thorne was dead also. The 4-Runner had not shown up. Kestrel had no paper life, and was probably in Mexico. Maybe it was time to figure out a way to somehow report all of these negatives as positives to the President.
At the outskirts of Manteca, where east-west 120 hit 1–5 running north and south through the great central valley, Janet parked the 4-Runner beside Fat-Arms LeDoux’s no-name gas station. Fat-Arms was 350 pounds, six-eight, hack boots, blue work shirt with the sleeves cut off to show his fat twenty-two inch upper arms, a red bandanna around his head like a pirate of the Caribbean.
He walked around the 4-Runner under the lights, glowering.
‘Somebody heavy looking for it, could get my nuts creamed.’
‘Looking for me,’ said Janet. ‘Not for the 4-Runner.’
‘I got a Suzuki thumper, we trade pink slips even up.’
An entry-level bike, but its single-cylinder, four-stroke engine had a hefty 600cc displacement. After they traded pink slips and Janet had roared away, Fat-Arms chortled aloud. He had stolen the Suzuki in Sacramento the week before, dummied up a pink, and switched plates with a totaled Yamaha V-Max. When she renewed the registration, the VIN would come back hot. Janet would get busted.
‘Stupid, fucking, stuck-up bitch.’
Served her right. She’d turned him down once, hard, when he had come onto her at Whiskey River.
Whiskey River was long and narrow, with an L-shaped bar along the left wall, a couple of tables along the right. In back, it opened out to a small dance floor with a bandstand for Friday and Saturday nights. But this was the usual slow mid-week night, just the way Kate Wayne liked it.
On the juke, Willie Nelson was grating out Whiskey River, their virtual theme song. Three wannabes she knew drove Harley clones were drinking draft beer at the bar. At one of the tables a guilty-looking couple, probably up from Modesto in separate cars for illicit sex, were having a drink before heading back to their respective dreary spouses.
A stranger shuffled in, paused to scan the room with deep-set, bitter chocolate eyes sunk deep in his face. Coal-black hair filthy and matted, ripe clothing. A three-day beard on his lean, feverish cheeks. He looked like a train wreck, but managed to climb onto a bar stool.
‘What’ll it be?’ asked Kate.
For answer, he put his head down on the bar and passed out.
Kate punched out her home number on the bar’s phone, whispered to Janet’s cautious voice, ‘He made it.’