Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(104)
The new drone turned to line itself up with the road, then rolled forward. As both doors came to a halt, the fan noise became louder, and the golden bird picked up speed, faster and faster until it lifted smoothly into the air, two feet, four feet. Then the tail dipped slightly and the drone leaped upward like a hawk in mid-flight, chasing its inevitable prey.
“Where’s it going?” asked Peter.
“I don’t know. The first drone, the one that landed, is my new prototype. Better wings, better glide, more lift. I told them it needed field testing.” He gave June a shy smile. “I just wanted to see my daughter. The one that just took off is the previous generation. They changed the encryption protocols a few days ago. I haven’t had control for a long time. But something big is happening now. You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” June said fiercely. “I just got here.”
Peter looked up at the bare granite ridges surrounding the little valley. He could see the waterfall where the river came through from the higher elevations to the west, but he didn’t see anything that looked like a trail. He had no idea where Lewis and Manny and his people would cross over.
He hoped they were already here.
Somewhere under the cover of trees.
To the Yeti, he said, “Will you take June inside with you? She’ll be safer there.”
June said, “You’re not the boss of me, Peter Ash.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re the boss. But that drone is their eye in the sky. Maybe you and your dad could make a run on their encryption, turn off those cameras?”
She looked at him. Of course she understood. “Okay.” She turned to the Yeti. “I’ll go inside with you. We could use a little help with something.”
“Hey,” said Peter. “Take your laptop with you.”
She flashed him a smile. “Waaaay ahead of you.”
“We should all go,” said the Yeti. “It’s not safe out here.”
“You’re probably right,” said Peter. “But I have a few things to do.”
50
LEWIS
He’d made good time at first, even though the narrow path started out nearly vertical and mostly mud. His boots were broken in and his legs didn’t mind the workout. He’d been running a rugged up-and-down trail along the Milwaukee River for years, a ten-mile loop over broken terrain with a forty-pound steel plate in his ruck. His load today wasn’t hardly heavy at all, mostly rifle and ammunition.
His concern was the dude behind him.
The path wasn’t much of a path, and once you passed the little string of primitive campsites, there was no good reason for anyone to be out here. The dude definitely had some skills. Lewis had sped up and slowed down and doubled back and all the rest, lost some time along the way, but had only seen the dude twice, both times on long doglegs wrapping broad inside curves where the mountain folded back on itself, and even those were just glimpses of something moving. Lewis heard him maybe four times, each time through some oddball trick of alpine acoustics, on those wide stretches of scree where the loose rocks rattled underfoot and echoed off those high granite walls.
Otherwise the dude might have been a ghost.
By midafternoon, Lewis figured he was just gonna have to outhump the motherfucker. So he hit the gas and hauled ass.
Lewis was city born and bred, didn’t come up with this wilderness bullshit. He got a fair amount of practice during two long deployments as a PFC in the Afghan boonies, which was actually a lot like this country, steep and bony and mostly dry. Long views over rocks and scrub to improvised enemy firing positions that changed every five minutes. He’d liked it when nobody was shooting at him, but that wasn’t often, not where he’d been. His army time taught him mountains and tactics and weapons, which came in handy there and afterward. He’d also learned, if he hadn’t known it already, that nobody was gonna look out for him but his own self. He’d taken that knowledge back to the world and created some opportunities that might not occur to just any old soul. The work wasn’t strictly legal but did give a particular kind of satisfaction and didn’t hurt no civilians, neither. Might even help some, you took a certain point of view.
Then he’d met Peter and they’d run into that mess in Milwaukee and everything changed. Dinah and her kids, something Lewis had never imagined possible. He was grateful as hell, but it was a shock, this new life. Making lunches and meeting teachers and getting kids to school and sports practice. Had its rewards for sure but excitement wasn’t exactly one of them. Not like he was used to.
He’d thought of this trip like a booster shot, giving him a dose to see him through the next year. When things were wrapped up here, he told himself, he’d be ready to go back to Dinah and the boys and domestic tranquillity. That was what he told himself, anyway.
By late afternoon, Lewis hadn’t seen or heard from the ghost in two hours. He munched handfuls of trail mix as he walked a long upward traverse, then over a broad saddle and up again, eyes and ears open ahead and behind. He was supposed to meet Peter’s friends in the upper snowfields by nightfall so they could get an early start at that pass where the river dropped a couple thousand feet. He could see the waterfall on the map, but nothing that looked like a way down. June had said she’d done it, but that was almost fifteen years gone. Rockfall, avalanche, the workings of ice and snow, no way to know what it looked like now.