Free Ice Lake by John Farrow Page A

experience, or object to being robbed. They might resist. In Luc’s plan, the operation had to be quick, startling, and decisive. The driver of the truck could not be allowed a moment to evaluate his choices.
The trucker stepped down from his vehicle just as Luc came around it from behind. They met at the midway point of the truck’s length.
“Go back, please, to truck,” Luc directed him, and he opened and closed his coat.
“Excuse me?” the man asked.
Already this was going badly. “Go back, please, to truck.” He opened and closed his coat again.
“I don’t follow you,” the man said.
“No, don’t follow me, go first!”
The clean-cut trucker wore a quizzical expression and scratched the side of his neck with one finger. “Sorry, Frenchie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Thinking fast, Luc decided that he had a problem. When he was nervous he did not speak English well.Saying “please” was probably a mistake, it sent the wrong signal. And perhaps the deadly force of his pistol had not been apparent during the quick flashes he had given the man.
Luc opened his coat a third time, and held it open. A hand, thrust through the open pocket of his coat, gripped the pistol and pointed it at the other man’s belly. “Get back in truck.”
For the first time, comprehension registered on the driver’s face. Looking down, he couldn’t take his eyes off the gun. A weapon of that heft aimed straight at him had created instant terror.
“Easy, easy,” he said, putting his hands up.
“Put down your hands! Get back in truck!”
The trucker was of medium build but still had fifty pounds on Luc. Around forty, he wore a wedding band on his ring finger. Luc could tell that he was already in shock and might not be able to hold himself together. He stayed right behind him as the trucker returned to the cab and climbed in, and Luc slammed the door on him. He moved quickly, and in a second was climbing up the passenger side. The door was locked. Luc nodded to the driver to lift the lock button.
The man thought it over, but only for two seconds, then leaned across and lifted it up.
“Good decision,” Luc said.
“What do you want?” He was looking around for help but saw none. He kept raising his hands, wanting to hold them over his head, as if that was expected of him, but then he’d remember that he’d been warned not to do that.
“Drive,” Luc commanded him. “Go where I tell you to go. Worry not so much. Don’t think about dying. You won’t die today if you do what I tell you to stay alive.”
“You want the cigarettes,” the driver said. He turned the key in the ignition and the engine started up.
“I want your smokes,” Luc agreed. “I want your truck, too. You, I don’t want. I don’t want trouble. Understand?”
The driver didn’t give him any trouble. They were already on the outskirts of town, and two quick turns put them on a lonely rural road. Luc didn’t want to drop him off close to any farmhouse, but he had that planned. He urged him out of the truck in a wooded area where the man would have to walk at least four miles to the nearest phone, and that was only if he happened to choose the right direction, which was not the way he’d come. The man stood on the shoulder of the road, looking up, still worried that he might be shot.
“You got your coat?” Luc asked him.
“It’s behind my seat.”
Luc fished it out and passed it down. “You want these boots here?”
“Yeah, sure.” Luc threw them down. “Thanks.”
“Anything else you need from here?”
“My gloves are between the seats.”
Luc dropped them into his outstretched hands.
“I wouldn’t mind my house keys. They’re on the same ring as the truck key.”
Leaving the key in the ignition, Luc twisted them off the ring, tossing the collection down to the owner.
“Pictures of my kids, inside the driver’s visor.”
He handed those down carefully, not to soil them on the roadside snow.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.