longer than i planned, both in writing it and in its actual wordcount length... but here it is! i could not let this monster of a mission drag out one more chapter so here we go. hope you enjoy reading it as much as i did writing it, cheers.
chapter title from 'pistols at dawn' by seinabo sey
chapter warnings: gun violence, minor bad-guy character death, blood and injury
It's a testament to exactly how deeply the cabin fever has set in that, when Evelyn Moua asks Riley if she'd like to come with her on a walk down by the lake, outside, in Minnesota in January, Riley accepts without hesitation. She zips up the warmest coat she can dig out of the safehouse's front closet and pulls a hat low over her face, following Evelyn out into the freezing air. It's fascinating to watch, for someone who's always lived in warm places, how her breath fogs out in front of her even through the scarf covering the lower half of her face.
They drive in Evelyn's car down to the lakefront and embark on a quiet, lonely walk over well-ploughed and salted slats of wood forming a walkway on the very edge of Lake Superior. It's hovering somewhere around three or four degrees out, and as Evelyn explained in the car, it's deep into the off-season for tourism, so it's just the two of them on the walk that day. There's an odd sound in the air, echoing and seeming to move around them, and Evelyn explains what it is when Riley asks, finally so unnerved that she has to know before her mind goes completely off the rails and starts inventing some kind of monster.
"It's the ice," Evelyn tells her, looking out over the grey-blue surface of the lake. "When it freezes like this, but not all the way through to the center, the motion of the water shoves the ice against the shore and cracks it. Because the waves are so strong in Superior, it eventually pushes the ice so far it starts overlapping onto itself. It's like… Like what happens with the Earth's plates, when there's an earthquake."
Riley nods, not wasting energy by responding out loud. Coming from California, earthquakes are something she definitely understands.
It's with the sound of the ice cracking and shifting in the background that she eventually broaches the subject and says, "I'm worried about them."
"Mac and Jack," Evelyn says, and Riley nods.
Mac had told her, reluctantly and after she'd needled him a bit about why he sounded off, that Will Anderson had hit him. He'd waited until Jack was called on a perimeter patrol and then explained in a distant, dismissive voice that Anderson had slapped him, but then hurried to qualify that it had been only once, not very hard, and was, as he'd put it, 'not even a big deal'. Personally, Riley would like to strongly disagree.
Not just because any time anyone hits Mac it is a 'big deal' - whether he thinks so or not - but also because, as she explains to Evelyn now, violence escalates. If Anderson will, for a minor infraction, hit him once, he'll do it again, and Evelyn agrees, nodding before she's even finished the sentence. Riley only grows more worried, the inside of her chest feeling as cold as the skin of her cheeks when she hears it, as Evelyn explains that they've seen this kind of behavior from Anderson before.
They'd warned Mac and Jack about it, the time Curtis had witnessed where Anderson had split Owen Holte's lip with the butt of his rifle, clocking the young man across the face with it in response to some comment he'd found somehow particularly out of line. Luke Holte himself had been standing not twenty feet away, according to Curtis, and had watched passively as his lieutenant struck his son, saying not a word about it. It's this anecdote that alarmed Riley even more than the mass amounts of weaponry present at the Northguard camp. Because if the leader of the militia was willing to watch Anderson hit one of his adult children across the face with a rifle, there's really no telling what he'd let his loose canon of a second in command to do to someone else.
"We've got a date, and they've got a location," Evenlyn says after a minute's silent walk, now heading back towards the car. The ice-crusted snow crunches under Riley's boots and she has to squint in the bright, watery sunlight cascading down over the snowed out landscape and making her understand why Evelyn had worn sunglasses on the drive over. "They're going to be done soon one way or another."
It's true, but the unease lingers in Riley's stomach as she climbs back into the car. They pull away from the deserted path by the lake and she watches pensively out the window, eyes roaming over the brightly lit piles of cracked and pushed up ice at the shore. Something about the lake itself puts her on edge as well, the vast power of it making her feel small and powerless. Evelyn cranks the heat and Riley looks away, trying to focus on what she'd said. They'd be done soon, and then they could all go home.
When they return to the safehouse, Curtis is in the kitchen. He's perched on the edge of a chair, casted leg awkwardly stretched out beside him, bent over a massive dinner table covered in maps. They're laid out one next to the other, topographical, navigational, general reference, and what looks like one he'd drawn himself, crudely sketched out and added to in at least four different colors of marker. It looks to Riley like Curtis is probably more stir crazy than she is, and she figures he's got the right to be. He's stuck inside completely, unable to risk leaving the house in the ice with his broken femur, while the mission he's devoted months of his life to culminates miles and miles North of him.
Judging by the way he's marking up the laminated maps, the small Post-It flags stuck here and there, he appears to be laying out the likely routes the Northguard will be taking on what they don't yet know will be their final attempt to cross the Canadian border. Riley walks over until she's standing at his right shoulder, looking over him down at the maps. They don't look like any maps she's ever seen before - though granted the most exposure Riley usually has to maps is of the Google variety, when trying to figure out how to get to a building in Los Angeles she's never been to.
"So there's just…" Riley trails off, her eyes raking over the collection of maps Curtis has laid out, all taking a different approach to the same stretch of land. "There's really nothing out there, huh? It's just trees and lakes. I'm not seeing any cities on here."
"Yeah, well. Welcome to Northern Minnesota. It's Duluth and then it's a handful of itty bitty places, and then Grand Marais, and after that it's just the Boundary Waters." One of Curtis's hands sweeps out over the top of the maps. "That's what it's called, the big old wilderness preserve up here. Got sections you're not even allowed to take motorized vehicles into, it's just canoeing and portage. When I first heard somebody was actually using that area for smuggling my first thought was that they must be completely insane to try something like that."
A shiver runs through Riley's shoulders and up her neck and she suddenly wants to duck back into the living room and grab a hat, turn the thermostat up in the house. Anything to stave off even the thought of what it must feel like up there.
"Near as I can tell," Curtis continues, seemingly oblivious to the odd horror Riley is being struck by, looking at and thinking about that place, that domineering chasm of trees and water that could take you away and never let you be found in a heartbeat, "they're probably headed up through Gunflint." One finger taps a lake smack on the US Canadian border, one slightly larger than most around it. "Maybe between there and North Lake, to avoid the lodge on the West of Gunflint. That's about the closest to civilization you're gonna get up there, and they won't want to trip anyone's alarm bells."
"Will our guys be able to bring their gear with them up there?"
"They're going to be able to take the range-boosted phone, stick it in an inside jacket pocket or something, but that's about it." Curtis thinks about it for a moment, then shrugs one shoulder. "I mean. They're gonna have their guns obviously, but, y'know, so will every Northguard wacko who's on the roster for this run, so that's not gonna be a massive help. They won't even be able to take the truck - once they reach the real dense part of the forest they're gonna be on offroading vehicles."
"So a couple outnumbered weapons and a ranged phone. And that's it," Riley repeats, just to be sure she's got things right. She knows she does, but a part of her can't help but hope she's somehow misunderstood, that things aren't that bad. No such luck.
"That's what it's all gonna come down to," Evelyn says, nodding solemnly, her eyes fixed on the innocuous topography map that represents mile after mile of remote, unforgiving forest, the path traced through Gunflint Lake, "unless Mac can find the biologic in time."
Mac does not find the biologic in time.
The day of the planned transport arrives, and Mac wakes up that morning with his heart in his throat. He and Jack have been conscripted to attend this trip up to Canada, at least for the American side of the run. They've been charged, under the supervision and direction of the entire Holte family and Will Anderson, along with three other Northguard footsoldiers, with transporting the weapons to a cabin an approximate thirty miles as the crow flies from their current location.
From that cabin, hidden deep in the trees on the Eastern side of Gunflint Lake, other Northguard will take it across the border itself, with only the lowest ranking and least trusted members of the organization making the initial gruelling trek on offroading vehicles. By virtue of hazing the new guys, or maybe merely to implicate new members in the criminal activity of the militia to ensure loyalty, Mac and Jack have been shuffled into this group. And, because Mac failed to do his job in time, they'll be stuck actually going on this trip, at least until Mac can figure something out.
By the time they reach the point in the woods where they'll be leaving their cars, outside of a Northguard footsoldier's family cabin, Mac still has not figured something out. He's standing by the open door of their borrowed truck, trying to buy himself another few seconds by fiddling with something in the glove box, when he hears the voice of Owen Holte, calling out to the main group, which is headed away towards the offroading vehicles.
"Be there in a sec, gotta check something."
Luke Holte must take his son's word for it, because the footsteps continue crunching away, and Mac and Jack are left alone with Owen rapidly approaching. Snow has begun to fall, a light drift on the drive over that's increased to heavy flakes dropping through the air, clumped together and blurring the landscape. They catch and build up on the dark ski hat obscuring the blond hair of the man walking towards them, making it hard to make out the look on his face. Mac's shoulders tense and Jack takes a step like he's about to walk around the car to intercept him, but before either of them can say a word, Owen starts talking in a low hiss of a voice.
"Same person that sent Curtis sent you, right?"
Mac is almost too shocked to respond. They hadn't been able to figure out which of the twins had been the one to leave the note, but he supposes they now have their answer, Owen cutting Jack off halfway through the first word of whatever he'd been about to ask.
"Just nod." They both nod, and so does Owen. He looks beyond anxious, eyes darting over his shoulder and back towards them, over and over on a loop. What he's doing right now obviously does not for a moment escape him, and he speaks fast and scared. "You're out of time. This is it. Back storage on my snowmobile, left compartment, wait until everyone else takes off." A beat of silence, and Owen's voice gets harsher in its hard whisper. "Just nod if you fucking understand me, okay?" Two more nods from Mac and Jack. Owen turns like he's about to walk back towards the offroading equipment, then looks back. "And make it look good. Please. If you want me to live through this, you have to make it look good."
There's no time to talk about it, to go over what they've just learned. There's no time to do anything but act. The wait until most of the Northguard have taken off, snowmobile engines sounding like chainsaws in the echoing, snow-cushioned wild, feels longer than Mac knows is possible. Jack's version of making it 'look good' turns out to be taking out the rear of Owen's snowmobile with the nose of his own, sending them both crashing into the snow. The others have all taken off ahead, leaving Mac and Jack to follow their path, and this leaves room for Mac to leap off his own vehicle and remove a small, well-fortified case from inside the storage compartment of Owen's wrecked rig.
Unfortunately, the sound is loud enough that it gets the attention of someone else. Specifically, it gets the attention of Will Anderson, who comes roaring back around the trees on his snowmobile, skidding to a halt in a Californian surf wave of fresh snowfall. Jack, who has climbed to his feet by now, an odd scrape across his face from where he'd likely hit something as he fell, gives Mac's shoulder a push.
"Go, go," he shouts, "I'll be right behind you, go!"
Mac doesn't have time to think, he just does it. He climbs up onto the last snowmobile and revs it on, heading back along the short trek towards the car. The corner of the case where he's zipped it into his jacket jabs into his collarbone. There was no other way to keep ahold of it while he drove, and it feels like he's got a live bomb zipped inside his coat, pressed to his chest so tight it can't possibly fall out. He's reached the car, waiting for Jack with a heart thundering so hard he's amazed it's not making a sound against the hard plastic of the case, when he hears it.
Engines. A shout. A gunshot. Two gunshots.
Mac is speeding back towards the side of the cabin before he's hardly registered it. All he knows is he has to find Jack and he has to find him now. The case presses into his chest, harder with each heave of his panicked lungs. He should leave. He should get to the car and leave, Jack said he'd be right behind him, he can hear James in his head screaming at him to leave, but he can't, because Jack isn't here and there was gunfire and he can't find Jack.
At the cabin he turns the vehicle off and jumps off it, boots crunching loudly in the splintered crust of ice. After the gunshots things went quiet, far too quiet. There's no more shouting, no more sounds of a struggle. Just the hum of engines in the distance, some of which Mac could swear were growing closer. And he still can't find Jack.
The snow swirls around and around, like the thickest fog Mac has ever been in, and all he can see is white. White stretching out into an endless distance, shadowed in grey where flurries overlap each other and crash as if they were waves in a turbulent ocean. The entire landscape is white and it disorients him, spinning around and around for any kind of landmark, anything that could tell him which way was up and what was happening around it. He looks for it until he sees it, and the moment he does, he wishes he hadn't.
Red. There's blood on the snow, bright and accusing and easily one of the most terrifying things Mac has ever seen. The math does itself as it always has - quickly, accurately, and without asking.
Gunshots. A yell. Jack nowhere in sight. Blood.
Shot. Jack's been shot.
There's a lot of it, too, sprayed out over the snow, covered by fresh flakes that quickly join the crimson lake as the wet and heat of the fresh blood melts the new that's fallen over the top of it. Jack's been shot and if there's that much blood, he's dead, and if he isn't dead yet, he will be soon. Jack. Dead.
Jack's dead.
"Jack!" The name comes out devastated, ripped out of his throat by an unexpected freight train of desperate grief. He's too frightened to care, to rein it in or think about what it means that he's feeling this, that Jack has become an anchor without which he's afraid he'll come unmoored. He screams it again, voice echoing dully in the snow-cushioned landscape. "Jack!"
Don't leave me don't leave me don'tleavemedon'tleaveme-
"JACK!"
"Hey!"
The shout catches Mac's attention and he spins around, looking over the pool of blood to finally locate its source, the body on the ground half obscured by snow kicked up in a struggle. The body of Will Anderson, whose face is clearly visible, hand still curled around the gun he'd likely at some point in the last thirty seconds fired. And standing not twenty feet away from Anderson, walking towards him, gun lowered but still in a ready position, is Jack. Jack, who aside from the bruise rapidly blooming under the scrape on his face, looks completely fine.
All Mac wants is to run to him. He wants to run over and throw himself into Jack's arms, muffle violent, heaving sobs against his chest, feel the warmth of a strong, unharmed heart pushing vital blood through a living body. Before he can act on this impulse, or slam it down and lock it away where it can't betray the overinvestment he's just crashed into the shocking truth of the depth of, something interrupts.
Another gunshot blows a softball-sized chunk of ice and bark off a tree to Jack's left, jarring Mac's entire nervous system right to his core. Apparently, Anderson hadn't been the only threat, and he spins, trying to locate the source of the sound. A shout from by where the snowmobiles had been parked gets Mac's attention and he looks over to see Owen Holte, in time for the Northguard-turned-informant to yell again, "Look out he has a-" And then he falls, knocked back into the side of the cabin by the shotgun blast that catches him in the shoulder and the side of his chest.
Mac has heard all about Luke Holte's shotgun. He's heard the story at meal times in the main building more than once in the last week, how his father had carried the gun, had hunted holiday dinners and defended his property with it for decades before passing it down. How Holte never goes anywhere without it, slung across his shoulder in a proud tribute to the father who'd taught him the dubiously termed 'values' he built the Northguard from. The shotgun on his shoulder and the handgun on his hip, and now, in the moment between Holte shooting his son and comprehending what he's done enough to move and re-aim at the people he'd really been going for, Jack seems to find his opportunity.
In the blink of an eye, they're grappling in the snow, the handgun ripped from the holster and tossed several feet away. Mac moves for it, to pick it up before Holte can get loose from Jack and make a move for it again. He's stopped before he can get there by yet another voice, the final piece of how this is all going to end sliding to position when Holte's daughter clicks the safety off her gun.
"Get up," she says, a tremor in her voice. The weapon is pointed at Jack and Mac, echoes of the absolute terror he'd been swept away by when he'd seen that blood rolling over him like the waves of the frozen lake nearby, goes for his own. Grace stops him before he can, seeing the movement and shouting, rising to a wild pitch, "If you make a move I will shoot Nylander right now I swear to God, don't try it. You, Nylander, let him go and get up."
"Grace, Jesus, finally," Holte snaps as he climbs to his feet, followed more warily by Jack.
Guided by the woman's gun, Jack walks slowly over until he and Mac are next to one another. Mac is frozen, fingers going numb even with gloves on, white flakes catching in his eyelashes and making him blink hard. The only sound is the sound of wet, short gasps coming from Owen, obviously not having been immediately fatally injured, but well on his way to losing his life if something isn't done, and done now. Grace's eyes flick around, landing frenetically and pinging away, Owen, Holte, Mac and Jack, Owen. Always back to Owen, her twin brother.
"What are you waiting for, girl, shoot them. We leave the bodies in the lake and we make our sale and we finally have the capital to move the Northguard into something to be reckoned with. This is what we've built, now finish it so we can get what we deserve." It's a terrifying order, not only because of what Holte is instructing his daughter to do, but because of what comes next. Because of what the Northguard could become, if given the opportunity.
Grace makes no move to lower her gun but nor does she comply, and Mac knows he has to do something.
"You listen to your father when he gives you an order, now do it!"
"He shot your brother, Grace." The words move through numb lips, the first thing Mac can think of to say. "This man has shot your brother, and if we don't get Owen to a hospital soon, then he's going to die. I know he's your father but your twin is bleeding out. Are you going to let him?"
"Don't listen to him, he's the one that-"
The sound of Owen's labored breathing grows louder and he coughs, dragging in enough air to let out, "'S tr-", aborted half-syllables that end in another cough.
"Grace-"
"Shut up!" the young woman shouts at Holte, though her gun remains trained on Mac and Jack. "Owen. Owen, please." It's not clear what the please is for, what she's asking of her brother. Mac couldn't guess. He wants to step closer to Jack, but he can't move, like his shoes have frozen right into the snow under him.
"T-" Another violent cough, Owen curling over on his side, nearly toppling face-first into the snow. "True." Finally, the whole word makes its way out, and once it comes, it doesn't stop, tumbling over itself to repeat, "True. 'S true."
The snow sheets past, the only thing moving for a long, breathless moment. Then, slowly, Grace's gun swings in a simple pivot, until the barrel is pointed straight at Luke Holte. Mac's knees almost give out. Just like that, she's made her choice, and they aren't going to die today.
The arrest of Holte is quick work, Jack going straight for him, while Mac rushes to try and help Grace stop the blood. They leave Holte inside the cabin cuffed to a radiator, where he won't be exposed to the freezing air outside, cram Grace and Owen into the cramped backseat of the F150 and speed off towards Grand Marais. There's a hospital there, the only one in the area, according to Riley, who Mac gets on the range-boosted phone as soon as Jack puts the key in the ignition.
North Shore Hospital has a three bed emergency room and a staff of shocked medical professionals who were not expecting this kind of mess to roll into their lot in the middle of the day. The local police are called, and by the time Riley arrives with Evelyn, between talking to them and the medical staff and everything that's happened over the day that's finally catching up to him, Mac is about ready to fall down where he stands. Jack has guided him to a chair in the waiting room before he could and they're sitting there in silence when Riley explodes through the doorway.
Mac stands when he sees her and is rocked back with the force of the hug she greets him with, her arms tight around his shoulders. He hugs her back fiercely, ducking his face down and taking a deep breath. Her hair smells like the sharp winter outside, like snow and wind, but Riley is warm and solid and the long, hard embrace makes Mac feel a little less like he's about as steady as a snowflake, ready to splinter and dissolve at any moment. When they break apart, she turns and hugs Jack too, the first time Mac has seen her do so. He hadn't told her about those moments, the long and agonizing seconds where he'd believed Jack had been shot dead, but she has obviously been carrying fear of her own, and it reminds Mac of his own instinct in the woods, the desperate, relieved hug he'd never acted on.
"I spoke to the doctors," Evelyn tells them when she catches up to the group. "They say that Owen Holte is going to pull through, there should be no permanent damage except some pretty nasty scarring." She explains the extent of his injuries, which had been severe but ultimately nonlethal. Some of the buckshot pellets had hit the side of his neck, which was the most alarming for the emergency staff, and Mac compulsively puts a hand over his own neck, palm pressed to his own scar tissue. Nobody but Jack seems to notice, the man shooting him an odd look, which Mac waves off with the barest shake of his head.
"What's gonna happen to them?" Mac asks after a moment. "Owen and Grace Holte?"
It's been dogging him the entire time they've been here, that moment beside the cabin in the snow, where Grace had made her choice, chosen Owen over Holte and turned her gun on her father. Her father. The man who by all accounts had controlled her entire world, ran the cult-like militia she was entrenched in, ordered her around, spoke to both she and her brother in the same frozen steel tone Mac has heard his whole life... That man had been standing right there, ordering her to shoot the two men responsible for destroying everything, and she hadn't done it.
Mac can't stop seeing it. The slow, petrified but decisive swing of that gun, the move that had saved his life and Jack's. Owen's too.
"They've both agreed to turn state's witness. The charges against them will likely be dropped, I don't think either of them will see jail time," Evelyn says, no indication of how she feels about that in her voice. "The Canadians should probably also be open to a deal, when we inform them of how things have developed."
The Minnesotan agent keeps talking, but most of it floats over Mac's head. He sits back down and tries to let his body relax somewhat in the hard, barely cushioned waiting room chair. Outside the window, the snow keeps falling, blurring any landscape that may have lay far beyond it. It feels like they've been here for a month, a year, not a week, so long he's forgotten what it's like to feel warm. The side of his neck aches and Mac keeps a palm over it, trying to bring some heat to the scar that's troubling him.
"You ready?" The voice brings him back from wherever he's drifted to, and Mac blinks hard, head snapping over to look at Jack.
The sight of him standing there, looking tired but at ease, face scraped but otherwise perfectly unharmed, brings a lump suddenly into Mac's throat, and he has a hard time catching his breath. His eyes sting and he blinks them hard, pressing the heels of his hands over them as he asks wordlessly, "Hmm?"
"To go home?"
Home. Home. Mac nods fiercely, coughing and clearing his throat. "Yeah," he says, and is pleased at how steady it comes out sounding. "Please. Let's go home."
