10. Banks
BANKS
Something shatters behind my sternum.
Not pain. Not the wound leaking heat down my side. Something older. Deeper. A fury that starts in the marrow and works outward until my hands shake with it.
She's asking me to leave her. This woman with the ruined pink boots and the borrowed jacket three sizes too big. This woman who crossed an ice bridge over a hundred-foot drop on nothing but my word. Who packed gauze into a wound with steady hands and didn't flinch when I pinned her to a wall.
She's asking me to walk away.
"No."
"Banks, listen to me?—"
"No." The word comes out barely human. Guttural. Scraped from somewhere below language. I grip her chin harder. Not enough to bruise. Enough to make her stop. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to decide you're the one who stays."
"The math doesn't work if we both?—"
"I don't do math." I release her face. Grab the straps of the pack on me and wrench the buckles tighter. My side screams. "I do the job. And right now the job is you."
Her eyes are huge. Wet. Not from pain anymore. From something else, something that looks like it's breaking her from the inside, and I can't stand it. Can't stand the sight of this woman bargaining with her own life like it's the cheaper option.
"I'm not leaving my woman on this mountain."
The words land between us. They register. Her lips part. The argument dies in her throat.
Good.
I don't give her time to rebuild it. I hook one arm under her thighs and the other across her back and stand.
The movement pulls the wound open. Fresh heat spills down my hip.
I shift her weight, pivot, and throw her over my left shoulder in a fireman's carry.
Her stomach shoves against my trapezius.
Her legs dangle against my body. She weighs nothing.
She weighs absolutely nothing and that fact makes me furious because this mountain would have killed her in six hours without intervention and she was ready to let it.
"Put me down."
"No."
"Your side is bleeding, you can't?—"
"Watch me."
I start walking. Not the trail. The trail is exposed and the helicopter crew has thermals by now.
I cut perpendicular to the slope, angling into the thickest band of old-growth spruce where the canopy knits together overhead like a roof.
Eighteen inches instead of three feet. My boots punch through the crust with each step but the footing underneath is frozen dirt, stable enough.
Hadley grabs two fistfuls of fabric at the small of my back. Holding on. Her breathing is fast and shallow against my spine.
The helicopter swings east. Spotlight raking the open snowfield we crossed three minutes ago.
The rotor wash shakes snow from the upper branches and it falls in sheets, glittering in the beam.
They're searching a grid. Disciplined. Professional.
Whoever is funding these men has deep pockets and a serious problem they need to bury.
I adjust her weight and keep moving.
My internal map of this section of the range is fifteen months old.
Last deployment up here was a missing ice climber on the north face.
I'd scouted every drainage, every ridgeline, every structure within a twenty-mile radius as part of the search grid.
The trapper's cabin was one of eight shelters I'd logged.
There are others. An old mining assay office at the bottom of Copper Creek drainage.
A Forest Service fire cache on the 4,200-foot contour.
And somewhere below the treeline on the eastern slope, a decommissioned repeater station with a radio mast.
That's where we're going.
If the equipment is still functional, I can reach Anchorage SAR on the emergency frequency. If it's dead, the station itself is built from corrugated steel and concrete block. Defensible. Invisible from the air under the canopy.
Eight miles. Maybe nine.
I have a graze that's still seeping, a woman over my shoulder with a blown knee, no water, half a medkit, and six rounds left in the Glock.
I've worked with less.
"Banks. I'm sorry."
"Don't."
"I wasn't trying to?—"
"I know what you were trying to do." I duck under a low branch. Snow cascades down my neck. "You were trying to be brave. You were trying to sacrifice yourself so I could run. And if you ever suggest it again I will lose my mind. Clear?"
Silence. Then a shaky exhale that ghosts warm through the jacket.
"Clear."
"Good."
I keep walking. One boot in front of the other. The pain in my side finds a rhythm with my steps and I let it. Pain is just information. It tells me I'm still upright. Still moving. Still between her and everything here that wants to take her from me.
The helicopter banks south. The sound fades to a distant, mechanical heartbeat.
I adjust her weight on my shoulder. Her fingers tighten in my jacket.
I walk faster.
The gorge opens like a wound in the mountainside.
Vertical rock walls. Forty feet high on both sides.
Barely eight feet across at the floor. The snow here is thin, scoured by wind that funnels through the slot like a bellows.
Overhead, the walls lean together, the gap between them choked with deadfall and frozen brush.
Natural roof. Dense enough to scatter a thermal signature into noise.
I duck under the first overhang and lower Hadley off my shoulder. Gentle. As gentle as my arms will allow with the wound pulsing heat down my flank. I set her on a flat boulder and her face cycles through pain, relief, and something stubborn that wants to be anger but can't quite get there.
"Stay off that knee."
She nods. Grips the rock with both hands. Her knuckles are raw and her lips have gone a color I don't like. Somewhere between blue and gray.
I unsling the pack and pull the thermal blanket from the side pocket.
Wrap it around her shoulders. Tuck the edges under her thighs.
She's shivering in waves now, full-body contractions that rattle her teeth.
The knee is swelling visibly through the fabric of her leggings, puffing the joint to twice its normal size.
"Can you flex it?"
She tries. Winces. "Halfway."
"Ligament strain. Not a tear." I'm guessing. But she needs to hear certainty right now, not probability. "Don't move it. Don't test it. Just keep it straight."
I step back and scan the gorge in both directions. East end opens onto a steep scree field that drops into timber. West end, where we entered, narrows to a choke point barely wide enough for one person to pass through sideways. Good terrain. Defensible terrain.
Then I hear it.
Not the helicopter. Not boots crunching snow. Something worse.
Dogs.
The sound is faint. Carried on the wind that pours through the gorge from the west. Two distinct people.
Deep-chested. Tracking hounds, not attack dogs.
But the men holding their leads will be armed, and the dogs don't need to hurt us.
They just need to find us. They just need to follow the blood trail I've been painting across this mountain for the last mile and a half.
I grab the Glock and drop the magazine. Count the rounds by touch. Six. Seat it back in and rack the slide.
"What is that?" Hadley heard it too.
"Dogs."
The color drains from her face. Whatever was left of it.
"How far?"
I listen. Factor wind speed, terrain deflection, the acoustic properties of the gorge acting as a natural amplifier. "Fifteen minutes. Maybe twelve."
"Oh God."
"Hadley." I wait until her eyes find mine. "I need you to stay exactly here. Don't move. Don't call out. No matter what you hear."
"What are you going to do?"
I don't answer that. Instead I strip the pack down to essentials. The 550 cord. The last two chem lights. The scout's knife I took off the man, a fixed-blade KA-BAR with a seven-inch edge. I shove the Glock into the back of my waistband and hook the cord over my shoulder.
"Banks."
"I'll be back."
"Banks, look at me."
I stop. Turn. She's sitting on that boulder wrapped in silver mylar with her blown knee and her ruined boots and her ridiculous fading pink hair, and she's staring at me like I am the only solid thing left on earth.
"Come back."
Two words. Not a question. A command. From a woman who has no authority to give me one and every right to try.
I cross the distance in two strides. Cup the back of her skull. Kiss her forehead hard enough to feel bone.
"Count on it."
Then I'm moving. Back toward the western choke point. Back toward the dogs.
The gorge narrows. Walls close in. I have to turn sideways to pass through the tightest section, rock scraping the wound on my right side, and I use that. Drag my bleeding flank against the stone. Leave scent. Leave trace. Make this the obvious path.
On the other side of the choke point, the terrain opens into a shallow depression. Snow-covered boulders. A cluster of fallen spruce trunks stacked by some old avalanche into a natural barricade. This is where I build it.
I string the 550 cord at ankle height between two boulders flanking the choke point exit.
Tie it taut. Not a tripwire for the dogs.
For the handler. The dogs will come through low and fast, noses to the ground, and they'll pass under the line.
The man behind them will be watching their heads, reading their body language, not his own feet.
I crack one chem light and wedge it into a rock crevice thirty yards past the trip line. Green glow. Just bright enough to draw the eye in this gray half-light. Make them think I went that direction. Make them commit.
Then I climb.
The gorge wall on the south side has a natural shelf six feet up. Narrow. Room enough for my shoulders and nothing else. I flatten myself against the frozen rock and pull the KA-BAR from its sheath.
The dogs are louder now.
I control my breathing. Four counts in. Four counts hold. Four counts out. My heartbeat drops to sixty. Fifty-five.
The first bark echoes through the choke point.
Close.
I grip the knife and wait.
The first handler comes through the choke point at a half-crouch, left hand wrapped in a leather lead, right hand on a short-barreled rifle slung across his body. The dog is a bloodhound. Big-boned, ears dragging the snow, nose locked to my blood trail like a guidance system.
The dog passes under the cord.
The handler doesn't.
His shin catches the 550 cord at full stride and he pitches forward, hands breaking away from both the lead and the rifle to catch himself. His face hits stone. I hear the wet crack of cartilage.
I drop from the shelf.
Seven feet straight down. My boots connect with the space between his shoulder blades and I ride him flat into the frozen ground.
The impact drives the air from his lungs in a compressed bark.
I pin his skull with my left hand and bring the KA-BAR across the back of his neck in a controlled strike, pommel-first, hammering his skull.
He goes limp. Not dead. Unconscious. I don't need him dead. I need him quiet.
The bloodhound circles back, confused, whining. No aggression. Tracking dogs aren't trained to attack. It noses its handler's slack face and sits, uncertain.
I strip the man's radio. His rifle. A Sig Sauer P320 in a thigh holster with a full magazine. His pockets give up two spare mags, a folding knife, and a GPS unit with a cracked screen that's still pulling satellite data.
The GPS shows three additional transponder signals. Two moving together roughly a mile northwest. One stationary, likely the helicopter on the ground.
Three more hostiles. Minimum.
The second dog handler should be close. They'd have been working a spread pattern, two hundred yards apart, converging on the blood trail. I have minutes.
I zip-tie the unconscious handler's wrists behind his back with his own restraints and drag him off the path into the deadfall. Stuff his radio in my pocket. Shoulder his rifle.
Then I move back through the choke point. Back to her.
She's exactly where I left her. Boulder. Mylar blanket. Wide brown eyes tracking my shape the second I round the corner. Her whole body sags with relief and then tenses again when she sees the blood on my hands.
"Not mine."
She swallows. Nods. Doesn't ask.
I kneel in front of her and pull the Sig from where I've tucked it at the small of my back. Press-check the chamber. Round seated. I wrap her fingers around the grip, adjusting her hold until her index finger rests flat along the frame above the trigger guard.
"This is a Sig P320. No manual safety. You point it and you pull the trigger. That's it."
"I've never fired a gun."
"You don't need to have fired a gun. You need to point it at center mass and squeeze. Not jerk. Squeeze."
Her hands are shaking. I fold both of mine over hers and hold them still. Wait until the tremor subsides. Wait until she meets my eyes.
"There's a crevice behind this boulder. Twelve inches wide, maybe three feet deep. Rock walls on three sides. You're going in there and you're not coming out until you hear my voice. My voice. No one else's."
"What if they find me?"
"You shoot anything that isn't me."
She looks at the weapon in her hands. Then back at me
"Anything that isn't you."
"Say it back."
"I shoot anything that isn't you."
I lift her off the boulder. She hisses through her teeth when the knee takes weight but she doesn't cry out.
I guide her around the back side of the rock where the gorge wall meets the boulder and creates a narrow vertical slot.
Dark. Tight. Invisible from the main gorge floor unless you're standing directly in front of it.
I back her into the crevice. She fits, barely. The rock scrapes her shoulders on both sides. I position the mylar blanket over her lap and legs, dulling her thermal signature against the frozen stone. Then I take the Sig and place it back in her grip, barrel angled toward the crevice opening.
"Both thumbs on the same side. Forward grip. Arms locked."
She adjusts. The muzzle wavers, then steadies.
"How long?"
"Short."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one you're getting. I will come back."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true."
I pull away. Check the GPS unit one more time. The two northwest transponders have shifted. Closer. Tightening the net.
I pick up the handler's rifle, sling it across my back opposite the Glock, and move toward the eastern end of the gorge where the scree field drops into timber. The trees down there are dense. Old growth. The kind of forest that swallows sound and light.
Good hunting ground.
I don't look back. Looking back is how you hesitate. And hesitation is how people die.
The timber swallows me in four strides.
Behind me, the gorge goes silent.
Hadley counts her own heartbeats in the dark. She reaches forty-seven. Fifty. Sixty.
Then a twig snaps directly behind her rock.
She raises the Sig. Fingers white on the grip. Muzzle shaking.
A massive hand clamps over her mouth from the left side of the crevice and pins her skull against the stone.