I moved to the other window and fired a random shot into the trees. The percussive boom of the Mossberg left my ears ringing. It took a solid minute for them to return to normal.
In the distance, I heard an engine turn over. Mink had made it to my truck. Now he just needed to turn around and get the hell out of there.
But if I could hear the engine, so could Dyer. He would know that I had stayed in the house to provide cover for Mink’s escape.
I took a chance, rose to my feet, and went running across the room and into the kitchen. I threw myself through the open window and landed face-first in a pile of snow. I blinked my eyes to clear them and then grabbed the side of the building to help regain my footing. I must have knocked my knee on the sill, because a shooting pain went through it as I straightened up.
I heard another engine off in the woods. The noise it made was almost a high-pitched whine: Dyer’s snowmobile.
I hadn’t considered the possibility that he might give chase.
I stumbled around the front of the cabin and looked down the steep hill. The holes my legs had left in the snow, climbing up from the road, made a zigzagging path. I took another step, felt my knee buckle, and grabbed at the woodpile for support. Birch logs rolled down, one after the other. Something else fell to the ground. It was the plastic sled Mink used to haul wood.
I glanced at it, glanced at the hill beneath me. I let my shotgun drop; the Mossberg swung on its sling against my side. I bent over, took hold of the sled by the edges, tried to get whatever momentum I could, and then belly flopped on top of it.
Headfirst, I went flying down the hill.
Then my shotgun slipped over the edge and began to drag against the surface. The sled turned sideways, and I flipped over. I had a glimpse of the sled continuing on without me. And then I began rolling over and over on my side, the way kids do when they’re playing, only with less control. The sling came loose from my shoulder, and I continued down the slope, my shotgun now lost.
I came to rest fifteen yards from the snowbank at the end of the driveway. My parka and pants were as white as if I had rolled in powdered sugar. Snow was packed into one of my ears. I had lost my knit cap, too.
I crawled on hands and aching knees to the bottom and pulled myself over the frozen bank. I staggered out into the road, then turned in a circle. I looked up the road and down the road. I cupped my hands around my stunned ears and listened.
Two engines: a truck above me and a snowmobile below.
The truck was revving and revving. Mink must have gotten himself stuck while trying to turn around.
Meanwhile, Dyer was moving to cut us off.
I limped uphill on my gimpy knee. My right hand fell to my hip. At least I hadn’t lost my SIG, too.
The sound of the snowmobile began to grow louder. Dyer was speeding straight up the road behind me.
I came around the corner and saw, through a sheer curtain of snow, my precious patrol truck wedged sideways in the road. The headlights showed how deeply the front was buried in a snowbank. The tires spun purposely, turning snow into ice. The Sierra wasn’t going anywhere without being winched free.
Mink kept pumping the gas, revving the engine, spinning the wheels.
I staggered toward the driver’s door, when suddenly I saw my shadow stretched out before me.
The snowmobile had turned the corner, too, and now its headlights were aimed directly at us, illuminating this tragicomic scene.
I glanced over my shoulder as the sled came to a stop. I couldn’t see past the glare, but I knew what was about to happen.
“Get down!” I shouted as I grabbed the frame of the truck bed.
I pulled myself over the edge and tumbled onto the liner, my head knocking Shadow’s carrier. I could have sworn I felt something brush my pants leg, but I didn’t hear a shot. The wolf dog let out a growl.
The term most people use for suppressors is silencers, but that is a misnomer. A gun, fitted with a sound moderator, isn’t silent, nor does it make that muffled thwump that you might have heard in movies. That noise is the invention of Hollywood sound engineers. An AR-15 rifle fitted with a suppressor makes a popping sound, less intense than the typical blast of an unmuzzled barrel, but loud enough to be heard from a distance of thirty yards, which was how far Logan Dyer was from my truck when he began unloading on us.
I heard the driver’s window explode first and then a second round took out the spotlight. The third bullet pierced the door. The fourth and the fifth were directed at me. Both of them tore clean holes through the steel frame of my vehicle, mere inches from my boots.
The shooting stopped.
“Mink?”