I looked around for my gun, but in my disorientation, I had no idea where to look. I gave a quick scan for holes in the snow where it may have fallen, but I had made a mess of the area with my thrashing about. I didn’t have time.
That’s when I saw the ax handle sticking out of the snow near the stack of firewood. I ran and grabbed it, expecting to have the whole ax, but it lifted light in my hand. It was only the handle. It would have to do. Mikhail was getting away. I put my glove back onto my bare right hand and began running.
I headed down the path laid by the track of the snowmobile, sinking into the snow with each step, but not nearly as bad as it would have been without the track. I ran at a full charge for the first hundred feet, but then reason began to replace adrenaline. He was on a snowmobile heading for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and beyond that, Canada. The snowmobile trail would end when he reached the Boundary Waters, and he would be forced to go it on foot. He’ll have a head start, but in this deep snow, I would have the advantage of stepping in his tracks.
I could hear the scream of the snowmobile engine in the distance. It swung in great crescendos, dropping to near silence after each—hitting the gas hard on the short straightaways and breaking for the turns. Reckless.
I slowed to a jog, working to get into a rhythm that would keep my breathing down so that the air didn’t burn my lungs. I just needed to keep my head and gain on him in small increments.
As the sound of the engine grew faint, I heard it suddenly die. I paused to listen and could hear nothing. He couldn’t have been to the end of the trail yet. He hadn’t gone far enough for that to be the cause of the silence. Something went wrong.
I picked up my pace.
The trail bounced up and down with some climbs, steep enough that I was nearly on my hands and knees. I slowed on those hills, half expecting an ambush. I had considered that Mikhail may have a gun, but I discarded that concern early on. He would have shot me at the cabin instead of throwing logs at me. He must have been in the final stages of preparation for his escape north. I caught him off guard.
As I approached my next hill, I could see a glint of yellow in the trees. I slowed to a walk and tested my grip on the ax handle. The buzz of bees that had filled my wrist after getting hit by that log was all but gone and my strength had returned. I charged up the hill with my weapon at the ready, only to find the abandoned snowmobile jammed into the craw of a group of saplings. Mikhail had been moving too fast to make the turn. I could see the holes in the snow where his legs carried him north. Here is where my advantage would begin.
Mikhail’s tracks led down a gentle slope to a valley and up the opposite hill. I couldn’t see him, but he had to be just beyond the crest. I stepped into his footprints and gave chase. The mechanics of cutting a fresh trail through snow is so much harder than walking in another man’s tracks. I would be limited to his gait, but not his pace. I could go faster, maybe only slightly, but it would be faster than he was moving. Catching him would be a mathematical certainty, as long as we had enough distance to cover, and I knew that we had plenty of distance before he would find civilization on the Canadian side of the border.
I moved as efficiently as I could, using the ax handle as a walking stick on the uphill climb. I needed to keep from falling down, which was difficult. Every stumble cost me valuable seconds. I could see where Mikhail tripped as he scurried down the slopes, and his wild, flailing steps as he climbed them.
Slow and steady, I whispered to myself.
As I came to the top of the second ridge, the snowfall had ebbed to a fine glitter, the lake opening up below me, beautiful and white, maybe half a mile across. Partway onto that lake, a tiny red figure trudged forward, lurching from one foot to the next as he fought to get across the lake.
I took a moment to catch my breath, my hands resting on my knees as I sucked in oxygen, my eyes focused on the man in red. He stopped and turned. With my gray pants and brown coat, I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me, but he picked up his pace anyway. The race was on.
I smiled and charged down the hill, stumbling only once but recovering quickly. Again I had to remind myself to keep a steady pace. I didn’t want to be physically depleted when I caught him. I punched through the last of the pine and aspen and found myself on the edge of the lake. I could see him well enough to see his arm swinging wildly, trying to keep his momentum going forward.
He was mine.
I slogged ahead, doing my best to ignore the pain in my chest. The cold air sizzled and wheezed as it abraded the tissue in my lungs. Snot from my nose froze against the stubble of whiskers on my upper lip. Tears, born of the cold breeze in my face, ran down my cheeks, and I had to blink hard to clear my eyes.
I was gaining.
I drew close enough to hear him coughing. The chase was destroying him. He glanced over his shoulder every ten or fifteen steps to see me gaining ground. He had to know the futility of his circumstance. Yet he kept up his pace—and I kept up mine.
We neared the northern shore of the lake, and he began to lean forward with every step, as if he were trying to reach out and grab the air to pull himself off the lake and out of my grasp. He yelled something over his shoulder, gibberish that vanished into the dwindling snow.
I was fifty feet behind him, and he was almost to the shoreline. He looked back at me and I could see the fear and exhaustion in his eyes.
Forty feet. I heard him yell something that sounded like “Leave me alone.”
Thirty feet. He reached the edge of the lake, pulling on a birch sapling to drag himself off the ice. Staggering forward, his head turning sharply to the left and right as if trying to find a path.
I used the same birch to pull myself off the lake, and now he was only fifteen feet away, his back still to me, his head swiveling in confusion.
I gripped my ax handle and raised it, charging with the last of my strength. He turned in time to see that chunk of hickory slicing through the air at his head. He raised his left arm to meet my blow, and I heard a crack of bone.
He screamed in pain and dropped to one knee. He fought to get back to his feet, and I raised the ax for a second blow. As I started my downswing, I saw the knife. He lunged. I jerked to the side and drove my ax handle into his head. This time he dropped down onto both knees, his eyes rolling up into his head as he fell backward into the snow.
I took a breath and raised the ax for the third blow, the one that would kill the man who killed my wife. And there, the ax remained.
CHAPTER 40