“I can’t back you up on this,” Walt warned.

“I’m a big boy. Go make your call.”

“Remember, Chuck: if this comes out that Danny’s culpable, he goes away for it, so don’t get your prints on that bag. You hear? And keep it somewhere handy. I may need it.”

“Hurry,” Webb said. “Before I lose my nerve.”

35

ROY COATS CAME THROUGH THE DOOR OF THE CABIN, LOOKING like Bigfoot. He was wrapped in layers of frost-coated clothing, his beard and mustache were white with globs of snotty ice, his face wind-burned from what had to have been a long snowmobile ride.

“Nice trip?” Mark Aker asked.

“Have you finished your paper?” Coats hung various pieces of clothing on wall hooks and the backs of chairs, in a semicircle around the woodstove. The Samakinn member who had delivered the insulin and stayed to watch Aker-Coats had called him Gearbox-he began dressing for outside. With the return of Coats, Gearbox was assigned perimeter patrol.

“Haven’t started it,” Mark Aker replied. “If it’s to be credible it has to be scientific. That takes time.”

Gearbox took off. Coats installed himself on a footstool in front of Aker, his left elbow up on the room’s only table.

“You’re stalling,” Coats said. “You’ve got all the insulin you need. We brought everything in from your cabin with us, so you’ve got your papers. Don’t push your luck, Doc.”

“They’re searching for me by now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

There was something about his confidence. Aker studied him carefully. “You have contacts in the sheriff’s office?” He waited for even the faintest of signs. “Challis?” He sighed. “So it’s Challis, is it?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Coats reminded.

“Didn’t have to. Your heartbeat gave you away. Your interior jugular vein. It runs continuous with the sigmoid sinus. A barometer to the soul, and your soul was disturbed when I mentioned the Challis sheriff’s office. So that much we both know: you’ve got an insider with Challis. And perhaps they might have ways of knowing what Custer or Lemhi County is up to. But do you think they could possibly know what Blaine is up to? Walt Fleming has trained with the FBI. Did you know that? His father invented the first SWAT team ever. You think he’s going to let Custer or Lemhi know what he’s doing? You think? Seriously? You know the toys he’s got available to him, all that money down in Blaine? Have you been listening for flyovers, Roy? Your boy out there on patrol-what kind of a heat signature does he throw off when he’s out there? How about this cabin? Your snowmobiles? You think Walt Fleming’s working with satellite images? I do. How long do you think you can keep this up?”

Coats turned, ostensibly to adjust his jacket on the back of a ladder-back chair, to help speed up drying. More than anything, he didn’t want Aker reading him like that. Not only did it creep him out, that someone could read his neck, but giving anything away cost him.

He settled back onto the footstool, facing his hostage with a calm, almost serene face.

“You ever heard of Shays’ Rebellion?” Coats asked.

Mark Aker stared back, his eyes flat.

“You know your American history?”

“Don’t do this,” Aker said.

“This was near the end of the war, the Revolutionary War. The Boston merchants pressed the state legislature to levy a tax on all the farmers. And they couldn’t pay the taxes-same as we can’t pay ’ em today. Shays organized an open rebellion, put together an army of some eight hundred-odd and went after them, pitchforks and rifles. What they did was against the law, and they paid mightily for it, but that rebellion is considered the last battle of the Revolutionary War because it changed opinion forever. The federal and state governments realized they had failed at representing the people. The People, Doc. Capital P.

“Now, I’m not saying we aren’t breaking the law, because we are. And I’m not claiming to be a tree hugger. Not hardly. I’m more what you might call a militant libertarian.” That won a bemused smile. Mark eyed all the books again, his opinion of his captor changing. He’d read about Stockholm syndrome, had no desire to go there. “But we did what we did for a reason. A purpose. Our government should not be dictating to other countries about things it doesn’t have under control itself. Plain and simple: someone’s got to show the people what’s going on.”

“And that’s you? You’re Shays? That’s supposed to justify this?” he said, indicating his own situation.

“Shays’ Rebellion was put down. Eighteen were given death sentences. Two were actually executed. I understand what’s in store for me. But, goddamn it…” he said, raising his voice. His intensity lit up the air between them. Then his face softened. “I’m giving you a real chance here. All I’m asking from you, Doc, is to tell the truth. I’m not some raghead holding an AK, trying to put words in your mouth. That’s the beauty of it: I don’t have to. The truth will hang them. Whether they hang me or not.”

“Okay,” Aker said.

Coats did a double take. He looked Aker over like it was someone else sitting in that chair. “You’ll write it,” he said to himself. He tried to contain a childlike enthusiasm.

“I said I would. And I mean it this time. But I’ve got to ask: is any of what you just told me for real?”

“All of it,” Coats said proudly. “That’s our heritage, Doc.”

“Because I’ve got a story for you.”

Coats leaned in toward Aker a little too close, a changed man, gloating over his victory.

“Have you ever heard of Aker’s Rebellion?” Mark asked.

Coats’s brow knitted. At the last second, he seemed to anticipate what was coming, to understand that Mark Aker had drawn him into a trap. But it was too late.

“Now you have.” The doc moved with the quickness of a snake.

A sudden heat flashed in Coats’s thigh, followed by a searing pain that bent him over. The doc had been concealing a pair of scissors behind his back. As Coats fell forward with the pain, the doc drove both elbows into his back and forced his face against the cast iron of the hot stove. The smell of burning hair and blistering skin filled the air as Coats sat upright, at which point the scissors plunged deeply up and into his left armpit, remaining there as the doc let go and grabbed a chair. He swung the chair and a light-headed Coats ducked to avoid the blow, only to realize too late that he was not the intended target. Instead, the sheet metal stovepipe dislodged with the chair’s clanging contact and the small cabin immediately filled with acrid gray smoke. The doc snagged Coats’s winter jacket and threw it on the stove. It smoldered only seconds before melting and smoking. The doc seized his own jacket from the wall, grabbed a flashlight from the windowsill, and was out the door.

Coats vomited. The skin on his burned face felt as if it were shrinking and tightening on his skull. His beard was singed off on that side, and, in its place, branded on his cheek at an awkward angle, were the reversed letters: SGNITSAC-VERMONT CASTINGS, the embossed name on the stove.

He dragged himself toward the door, his leg wound bleeding badly, his arm in pain. The doc had known exactly what he was doing: both wounds immobilized him.

He reached the door, a blood trail painted behind him. Hacking. Unable to breathe for the pain. He tried to get to his knees, to reach the doorknob, but his leg wound wouldn’t let him. He grabbed hold of the knob, only to realize his bulk was blocking the door. He collapsed back down to the floor. Reached for his ankle. A.38 revolver, in a calf holster.

Fired off three rounds. Waited.

Debated using the last three. Decided against it: if Aker returned, Coats wanted some rounds left for self-defense.

“FUCK!” he screamed. Smoke swirled just above his head. He coughed and gagged, and forced himself up through insurmountable pain toward the door.