They’d given up calling for me but had posted a guard. Even with all the noise I was making dragging the carcass no one heard me until I stood behind the Marshal and tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around in shock nearly hitting me with his gun. If I hadn’t ducked, I’d have had a new hole in me.
“Jesus! Where the hell did you come from? And where the hell did you go? Michael, Cam! He’s back!”
All three of them joined me in the yard as I hung my kill from the hook on the edge of the porch. I started skinning it and Maven helped me. We had the deer quartered and the back strap cut into steaks in minutes.
I cooked for them using what I could find in the cabin and scrounged from the yard. New wild garlic and onions were just coming up and there were plenty of dried spices inside. We ate well; venison steaks pan-fried with rice and dried tomatoes, coffee and Oreo cookies for dessert.
The sun was just coming up when I crawled into bed but not before I warned them to hang the deer meat high enough so that bears couldn’t reach it. I heard coyotes howling in my sleep but that wasn’t what woke me. No, it was the smell of frying meat and fresh coffee. I rolled over on the couch and nearly fell off onto the floor; I needn’t have worried about stepping on any of the three---all agents were up and already eating. I looked around, there wasn’t a clock in the cabin that worked, only one stuck at 6:40 that needed new batteries.
“What time is it?” I had a mouth that tasted as if I’d eaten old cigars and gunk stuck to my eyelids. Drool caked my lips and the smell of day-old sweaty men was a tang that oozed from the cabin almost thick enough to see. I suspected that I smelled no better. There wasn’t a shower handy to rectify the problem nor was I going to brave the nearest cold water stream.
“Any water?” I asked and Anson turned on the tap. Clear, clean water flowed with a groaning of pipes. He had started the generator and primed the well.
“It’s eleven thirty. I’ve got some warmed up on the stove if you want to wash up and there are new toothbrushes on the porch,” he told me. I used the port-a-potty, found towels and a bar of soap as I made myself halfway presentable. Put on clean clothes that the FBI men had brought with them. Over that, I pulled on a camo pair of coveralls that the owners had left in the cabin. I noticed that the agents had changed into everyday clothes, as well. Jeans, Carhartt shirts, and jackets. Knives hanging from their belts in sheaths and their shoulder holsters with extra ammo clips.
They’d left me gravy with biscuits and coffee, a fairly decent camp breakfast. I ate quickly, not sure when we’d be picking up to leave.
Delaney and Anson acted as if they were waiting on someone. The longer they waited, the antsier they grew. I went outside and was told not to leave the clearing, not that they could have stopped me short of handcuffing me to a tree or shooting me.
I paced the perimeter of the yard listening for any sounds out of the ordinary but all I heard were the normal ones of jays, squirrels, crows, and mice. Anson came out with his face pressed close to his radio and from the frowns, the news wasn’t making him happy.
“Let me guess,” I broke in. “Your second team was compromised and/or is missing. Or you can’t contact them.”
“I can’t reach my agents.” He gave me one of those looks and I refrained from saying ‘I told you so.’
“Any of them or just the secondary team?” Delaney asked. I studied the radio.
“What frequencies are you using? FBI dedicated or something else?” I asked.
“We set something up by burner phone,” the AD said in frustration. “And in code so no one could listen in.”
I rolled my eyes again. “We’re talking about the NSA and their Sonic program. You have heard about Sonic, right? The 24/7-365-day monitoring system of every cell phone, landline and IP address around the world?”
“Of course, I know about it,” Anson said grumpily. “I also know there aren’t enough techs to listen in on real-time even on key phrases like ‘bomb’, ‘nuclear’ and ‘package.’”
“Let’s hope so,” I returned. “For the sake of my continued good health and freedo.”
Anson shouted for the other two to load up and again, the Marshal rode the BMW out first. We sat in the Chrysler and waited for Maven to call back with the okay. Once Anson heard that, he drove slowly onto the dirt road being careful to keep the high crown of the gravel road from tearing out the oil pan. When he hit the pavement, he let out a sigh of relief and hit the gas.
“At least we have a chance of outrunning anyone on the road,” he muttered. We rode down a state highway that meandered through the lower hills of the Rockies before they climbed into the monster driving hazards for which they were famous.
The route he chose bypassed the major cities and made use of backcountry roads. Places where we could land a plane and fly out without attracting too much attention.
“The next stop is at Long Knife,” Delaney said and I looked up from the paperback I’d found at the cabin. It was an old western called “The Half-Breed” by Peter Dawson. Well-worn, the spine was broken, I’d nearly finished it even though reading in the car made me sick to my stomach.
“Is that where we’ll fly out of here?”
“I thought I’d put you on the bus,” he retorted.
“Hope it’s a private plane. I need ID for a commercial flight.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a smartass?” Delaney asked turning around to stare over the seat. His eyes grew huge and I turned to see what had alarmed him.
Coming up behind us was a large box van with a cowcatcher grille up front. It was coming fast, one of the few vehicles we’d seen on the road. Anson hit the brakes and in front of us, I saw a road block composed of black SUVs and police cars. There was no sign of the BMW or the Marshal.
I leaned over the front seat and wrenched the wheel right, screaming in Anson’s ear to hit the gas. Unquestioning, he did as I asked and we flew off the shoulder into the trees and down a shallow slope. Tearing a path through young aspens, it was only my reflexes that kept us from running into a trunk large enough to stop us with lethal force. That and the fact that this area had fallen victim to a forest fire only a few years earlier and had been razed. New growth was only inches thick.
We flew down the slope and disappeared from the view atop the highway. Only when I said brake did Anson hit the brake pedal and the car slewed sideways, rocked and came to a rest on the edge of a deep ravine. The airbags went off and the windows shattered into a million pieces that glittered in the sun.
I bolted from the back seat grabbing my pack, bow, and quiver of arrows. Reached into the front window after scraping the glass out of the way and dragged a shaken pair of agents through. Neither was hurt, airbags and seatbelts had done their jobs but both were in shock, anyway.
“Hey.” I tugged at their weapons and that roused them. “You okay? Grab what you can, we need to run.” I popped the trunk.
Pulling out their spare clothes, gear and what food and water I could carry, I handed them the rest and bullied them into moving. But not before I tossed a lit rag into the gas tank.
“C’mon, you old dudes! Run!” I took off and they followed me into the heavier underbrush below the fire-scarred ridge. I led them down a deer trail deep into the woods opting to put distance between us and our pursuers. When I had done that, I would set about erasing any sign we might have left behind. They stopped behind me when the hollow thump of the car exploding echoed towards us.
The woods folded around us, the trees so close that if the two hadn’t stayed on my footsteps, neither of them would have seen the other. Trees grew thick competing for space, their branches forming skirts around the trunks and thickets that we had to push through. Thickets that scraped our arms and faces, thickets that left our clothes sodden yet the pair kept up with me on the uneven ground.
Pine needles and ferns covered the ground hiding roots and rocks that might trip up an unwary hiker. We were traveling at a run; not paying any attention to what was underneath our feet. We were intent on making as much distance from the pursuit as we could.
We’d gone at a steady rate for an hour; both of them had sweat running from their faces and staining their shirts. Both of them had opened their outer coats and the top buttons from their dress shirts. Both of them were breathing harsher than I would have liked but I put that down to nerves.
I pulled them under a bushy hemlock where we crouched beneath the piney scented branches and caught our breath. I dug through my pack for a map, all I found were my food packs, spare socks and fire starter plus a compass and magnifying glass.
“What are you looking for? Do you know where we are?” Delaney asked. He went through his own stuff and found a state map, creased and folded, fifteen years old or more.
“Will this help? I found it in the cabin.” I barely remembered the area, let alone the topographical contours of this place; I’d seen the map only for a minute or two and that had been Kalispell.
I opened the faded old paper and sighed with relief. It had the towns, state highways, unpaved roads, state parks and national forest with an insert of the area. I was hoping for contour lines to show me the lay of the terrain but the map showed me the rivers and highest peaks at which we now found ourselves.
“Damn,” I grumbled under my breath. “I wish I had my quipp.”
Anson reached into his pockets and dug out a plastic evidence bag with several pieces of what used to be my cell phone. “Can you do something with this?”
I snatched it back. Nothing had been disconnected from the circuitry; the wiring was still intact and the battery in the bag. It was still usable if I could put it all back together. I was working on that when Delaney’s two-way produced static and we heard Maven’s voice come through in a whisper.
“Mike? Cam? Can you hear me? I’m hiding in a barn off the road just down from the roadblock. Over.”
“Don’t answer him,” I said snapping the last piece into place. The unit sampled my DNA and vibrated to tell me that it was functioning. Their faces were solemn in the gloom under the tree and the heat from their bodies made it a bit musty. They looked at me and questioned my last comment.
I scanned the radio’s frequency and located its user’s coordinates. The GPS put Maven firmly five miles down the road past the road block and in the middle of a cluster of large vehicles. Probably a mobile command center. And his friend and brother-in-law were smack dabbed in the middle of it all.
“You sure you know this dude?” I asked with a dry mouth. “Five-million-dollar reward would tempt the righteous.”
I showed Anson the information on the quipp and his face set in grim lines. “What now?”
Reading the map, I located our exact position. We were on the south slope of an escarpment that dropped two hundred feet a hundred yards from where we hid. Called the ‘Little Gorge’, at its base was a swift white-water stream that cut through the gorge and prevented us from crossing over to the western slope. If we hiked higher, we would hit peaks of 12-13,000 feet without the proper gear; i.e. food, clothing, tents or boots.
Descending would bring us back to the road where we were sure to meet with NSA agents. No mention of the Intelligence community of any search underway for me but the Internet and News Stations were still going crazy about my escape. Possible sightings of me entering Canada, of me in Kalispell at the Denny’s and my subsequent capture by FBI agents at gunpoint.
There were pictures taken from the front of the Denny’s where the photographer had panned the crowds. Faces jumped out at me, faces that I saw in the crowd made my mouth dry up instantly, my hand's sweat and my stomach cramp in fear. Aiken’s face stared back at the camera and behind him were Morrell and Andrews. I didn’t see Chase or Cameron but I knew both were in the shadows somewhere.