Chapter Fifty-Eight
Across the entire US from the state of Maine to Hawaii, at exactly the same time of day, a million people received an e-mail, text, cell call, landline phone call or telegram announcing that they had or would receive an all-expense paid trip to Toronto, Calgary, Quebec or Montreal, Canada. Tickets were available for an immediate download and certified as legit. Those who were still in doubt could call any airline and verify that the tickets were real and paid for. The airlines were deluged with phone calls and each customer was told yes, a reservation was made and paid for in their names. Itineraries were sent and nearly 95% of those called obeyed the instructions to use the tickets within the next 12 hours or the trip was void with no refunds. One quirk, the tickets were held in the name of Lake Hamilton and they were to ask for them that way.
Within three hours, the US Intelligence services were going insane trying to stem the tide of departing US citizens who were a strangely similar group of people. Half were males under the age of 40 and the other half females under 35. It looked like a convention of professionals meeting for a company getaway - only in the thousands. The airlines and hotels were agog with the 1000% jump in revenue, all paid for out of Bitcoins and anonymous.
Toronto Hotels had to sub-contract to accommodate them all, even using B&B’s outside the city. And they weren’t the only large metropolitan area to be hit. Quebec, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton were also inundated with American tourists.
The FBI and Homeland Security were bewildered and unable to keep track of a tenth of the horde. In every group of hundred or so was one that resembled their quarry yet when approached and taken into custody, fingerprints proved it was not Strongbow. Devereaux decided that the entire mess was just a diversion as the plane trip to Florida had been.
A team intercepted the Senator’s plane before it could take off and that group of passengers turned out to be a Bingo group from a nursing home in the area. The Senator laughed so hard he was in danger of choking on his own spit until one old lady with blue hair whacked him hard between the shoulder blades. She offered him a nip from her thermos which did not contain coffee or tea but good old fashioned Kentucky Bourbon.
After 12 hours of fruitless headless chicken running behavior, Devereaux pulled his team back and asked for options. It was one of his younger agents that offered his opinions. “I’d want to go home,” he said. “If I was leaving forever, I’d want to look at my home one last time. He dropped off the radar because he did not want anyone to see him heading west. Home. Look for him there.”
“He was born on the Reservation,” Devereaux mused. “A small one deep in the heart of the San Juan Wilderness. It would take an army to find him.”
“Not an army. A tracker. That’s what Chase’s Sgt. Aiken does. He tracks men for the NSA and CIA. Find him or someone like him and you’ll find this kid.”
The DoD pulled out a map of the state of Colorado and plotted his strategy.
I
We couldn’t fly any further and not just because of the storm. Any more use of the jet would point an arrow straight to where I was hiding. We waited out the storm in silence, an uncomfortable 36 hours because I had no control over the weather. Huddled in faded jeans, jacket and used boots, I kept quiet and out of the way of the adults. I’d found a spot at the top of the basement stairs, away from their arguments and grumblings but within reach of windows and doors where I could watch the face of the storm.
The wind died around 2 a.m. and with it, the rain. The silence of the moaning wind was unnerving but the other noises told me that life was resuming back to normal. The hoot of an owl, the mournful yapping of coyotes and the kree-kree-kree of a nighthawk told me that the storm had blown out. Nature had reclaimed the night.
The air smelled of ozone, cedar limbs broken and water stirred to mud. Of broken and raw lumber and fires from lightning damage.
There were no sirens breaking the deep of the night here on the rez, just the cautious sound of voices calling for help and to offer help. Voices assessing the damage.
Redline Pete and George apologized, saying that they had to go see what damage had been done and what aid they could provide for the injured and homeless. Darren had already left the house; the atmosphere lighter with his departure.
Mike wanted to help but hovered not wanting to leave my side. I told him to go, that I did not need a babysitter or his help anymore. He followed Little Bear out. The silence inside the house was impenetrable.
I descended the stairs to the basement and found the gear that I had asked Redline Pete to assemble and set aside. Gore-Tex vest and jacket, lined rip-stop pants, long underwear, and long-sleeved tee shirts. Everything in drab green and browns. Boots broke in next to a rigid framed backpack with a drop cloth, tent and sleeping bag. I lifted it, it weighed over 40 pounds.
Rifle with scope, canteens and a compound bow with a quiver of hunting broadhead arrows in camouflage. Unpacking everything, I pared it down to the bare essentials before I stripped and redressed in the survival gear. The scar on my chest was a bare white line; it still hurt underneath with a residual tenderness and weakness.
Last on was the aluminum framed pack. I shrugged it on only after carrying it upstairs, through the kitchen and out onto the back porch. It took only four steps down from the deck and four more to reach the majestic wilderness that was the San Juans. It folded around me.
I walked lightly, conscious of my feet and not to leave a sign of my passage through the grass or on the ground. This made my going slower than normal yet I knew that I could not leave one clue or my friends would track me.
Once I’d gone a mile in through dense red pine and lodgepole, I could move faster. The pine needles under my feet were thick enough to mask any prints on the rocky soil. Unless, I ran. I had too many miles to go before I panicked enough to do that.
I walked uphill; I wanted to reach the ridges where I could look down and back to see if anyone from the reservation had followed me. It would most likely be hours before anyone thought to notice I was gone and by then, emergency services would be thick on the ground making my disappearance even harder to spot. I knew Redline Pete would have brought help in, using the stolen money to pay for it.
The only electronic device I carried was my quipp. With it, I could contact everyone I needed, make changes in the chess program I had set in motion and keep abreast of what was happening out in the world without fear of being triangulated.
Walking further into the wilderness, I aimed my feet towards Conejos Peak which I knew to be a relatively hard trail with long traversing switchbacks. It would most likely have park visitors using it even this early in the season. One of the trails used in the National Park system, it crossed the Continental Divide but I would only be on it long enough to cross over into Utah near King’s Peak. After that, I would be deep in lands not normally visited by any but the most die-hard backcountry hikers. I was hoping not to meet up with anyone who could authenticate my presence as they would definitely remember a hiker carrying both a scoped rifle and bow. It was out of season for anything but turkey. I would see mule deer and elk once I climbed higher but would not need to hunt until my dried goods were long gone.
I walked for a good four hours before I took my first break. The forest showed the effects of the storm. Downed trees were everywhere, making some places almost impassable. State crews would have to spend months cleaning up this mess; I wasn’t sure if they had the funds to do so. I wanted to make sure that I was deep enough into the national forest so that my friends couldn’t track me down. I’d told them my plans had been to fly out and meet DeCarlos and the Kitwillies, going on from there by car towards the Canadian border.
My first stop was a hundred yards off the Conejos Peak trail on a small spit of land that jutted out over the valley below me. I could see my back-trail almost to the trailhead and even though most of it was covered by trees, enough clear patches existed so that I could see if anyone was following me. There were enough star and moonlight for my eyes to pick out movement and the shapes of anything human. I saw only animals. Below the split was a ravine where runoff had dug into the friable rock to make an early wet season waterfall. Such rock would also make climbing difficult as it would not hold pitons and slide under boots. The sound of the water was what drew me to the spot, I loved the sweet rushing of water over stones and the bellowing of it as it fell in a veil of ever-changing lace. The bad thing about sitting so close to the spectacle was that it could mask the sound of approaching predators, both animal and human. It was also bad camping etiquette to hog a water source and keep wildlife from it or to build a latrine nearby and pollute a drinking source.
I found a semi-flat rock near a downed stump that rested against a rising rock wall near the face of the escarpment and eased my pack off my shoulders. It was a good place to sit and rest, with concealment for me yet I could watch below me. I set the pack down. I was sore, my chest and shoulders had rubbed under the straps and load, my lower back reminded me that only days previously, I had been flat out in an ICU with a gunshot wound.
I was starving and my first task was not to light a fire but to pop open an MRE and activate the chemical pack that made the food hot. As meals go, it wasn’t that bad, meatloaf with gravy, granola bar with almonds and raisins and chocolate bar with nuts. I’d been sipping water from my canteen all along; I had two hanging from my pack and would refill them from any clean spring I happened across. They were safer than drinking from the creeks and I wouldn’t have to use chemicals to disinfect them.
The treetops were over sixty feet above my heads even though I was sure these weren’t first growth giants they were still huge. The sun was just rising, pushing back the stars and the moon. After the storm had passed, the night had been incredibly still and the moon bright. An easy walk for me in the woods but not for anyone trying to follow. And I knew that they would follow.
I leaned back against a tree trunk and closed my eyes. I would allow myself a half hour for a breakfast break. Any longer would let me stiffen up and want to sleep. I figured I had done maybe ten miles if I was lucky with most of that being uphill. I had gone from 8,000 feet above sea level to over 12,000. Some of the other peaks I would have to cross would be even higher than that.
I yawned and rested, the food a warm nugget in my belly. Under my hand resting on my lap was the rifle. Not as a deterrent against wildlife but for protection against anyone coming after me. And I knew there would be, just as I knew my ruse with the free trips would only confuse Chase and his NSA for a day or two.
The soft rustlings of the bare branches of the few deciduous trees, the soughing of the wind through the pines and hemlocks, the quiet rushing of the waterfall all combined to lull me to sleep. I let it, my body needed it to recover from the stress of the last few days.
I slept no more than 30 minutes, waking myself within a minute or two. The sun had risen fully by that time. The air was crisp and chill, a faint mist hovering in the dips as the moisture in the air reacted with the rising temperatures.
Patches of snow covered the shaded sections yet faint green shoots of grass, fiddleheads and snow lilies broke through the snow cover. Moss and lichens covered the rocks which themselves sweated off the frost from the night before.
Ground squirrels and chipmunks scolded me as I sat on my stump watching their antics, their busy-bee grocery shopping. A mountain jay dove near me, eying the foil packets that had held my meals. I would not leave my trash behind to kill animals or tell humans that I had been there. It went into a separate pocket for such stuff until I could bury or dispose of it properly.
Lunch was at 12 noon. By then, I was starving, shaky and suffering from caffeine withdrawal. I made a small fire and brewed a pot of cowboy coffee. Strong and black with the grounds boiled right in the water. For a treat, I added four spoonfuls of powdered milk and spent an hour enjoying both the view and the coffee.
I’d only managed another 5 or 6 miles, most of them had been straight uphill on slopes that challenged my stamina and my calves. I was still several hours from the crest. Once I did reach the peak, I could use the old cabin that was nestled under a ledge on the backside of the mountain in a thicket of red pine and cedar. One room, it had a stone fireplace, bed and a camp stove with two windows and a door. All covered with iron bars to keep out the bears. Next to the house was piled a cord of wood and it was the custom of campers to replace what they used before leaving the cabin. In the pines, someone had dropped several trees to make a corral where they could turn loose their mounts. It was not a comfortable place to be in one of the frequent thunderstorms that hit the area.
Someone had been in the cabin last hunting season and restocked, leaving notes in the journal that went back 45 years. Other journals were stacked in the bookshelf on the far wall going all the way back to the late 1800s when the cabin had originally been built. I did not add to them.
Canned goods filled the shelves and an old-fashioned can opener hung from the door. Dishes were old blue chipped tin and paper, a spigot pumped water fresh from a well below the plank floors. There was a deep dry well next to a cast iron sink and I pitied the mule that had brought it up the mountain.
The counter was wooden with granite on top, a plank table with four mismatched chairs and a pine-framed bed with a rope box spring. The mattress was new, a twin air bed with a foot pump stored under the frame. There were clean sheets stored in a chest at the foot of the bed and a down sleeping bag opened and spread out on the flat mattress.
I wasn’t planning on staying more than overnight, it was one of those places that a helicopter could fly to and check for me; one of the few passes I had to use to cross over into Utah.
I dropped my gear inside the door and sat outside on a stump left for use as a chair so I could watch the sun set below the mountain range.