by Dan Latus
But he had already hit Harry hard and sent him sliding across the floor. And I was still on my knees. That made us both vulnerable to the arrival of the third man, the one who must have smashed the door off its hinges with that kung-fu style kick. He would have fallen to the ground after the hit and taken valuable seconds to get back to his feet. But he came in fast and hard now, and Harry and I were spread-eagled on the floor.
Despairingly, I levered myself upwards with one hand, trying to keep some strength in the hand wielding the poker. I was too slow, too weak and too late. The new man headed straight for me. I saw a blade gleam in the lamplight as he raised his arm to bring the knife down on me. I knew I couldn’t stop him, and I couldn’t avoid the thrust of his weapon either.
But Harry could — and he did.
The deafening sound of gunshots filled the cabin. Three, perhaps four. The man faltered in his headlong rush. His expression changed. The arm held aloft slumped. He tripped and sprawled past me onto the floor.
I pushed myself the rest of the way into an upright position and tried to ready myself to face another attack. But none came. Not from inside the room, and not from outside either.
Doubled over, gasping for breath, I glanced around the room and saw it was over. They were done. And we were OK — just.
They must have thought three men would be enough. If Harry had been here alone, or if I had, it would have been. Three would have been more than enough.
Now, though, one man was close to death from an old-fashioned iron poker that had torn his throat open. A second, the one who had been shot, was already dead. No doubt about that. The third was gurgling and writhing in pain from broken legs.
‘You OK?’ I gasped at Harry as he levered himself up from the floor, gun still in hand.
‘Yeah.’
‘Thanks. If you hadn’t—’
‘I got lucky.’
‘And me.’
‘We’d better get out of here,’ Harry said, glancing around the room. ‘Somebody will be here soon. We can’t afford to get involved with the police.’
‘What about him?’ I asked, pointing at the man with the smashed legs.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Harry said, raising his gun.
‘No!’
Harry glanced questioningly at me.
‘Leave him,’ I said sharply.
Harry hesitated, but he was itching to pull the trigger. I could see that. He was a battlefield warrior, back in action.
‘It would be better for us,’ I told him.
‘How’s that?’
‘Defending ourselves is one thing. Shooting a man in cold blood is something else where I come from.’
‘You’re soft,’ he said with contempt, but he lowered the gun.
‘Just leave him, Harry. Let’s go.’
He obviously wasn’t happy, but he didn’t argue any more either. We grabbed our things and got out of there, leaving a blood-soaked scene and three broken bodies behind us.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was a bad scene we were leaving behind us, but paradoxically I was feeling better. More purposeful, as well as being under the influence of an adrenaline rush. I knew now there was some point in my being here. Harry really was in great danger. His paranoia was fully justified.
In a minute or two we were rolling. There were lights on in the office building, but we didn’t stop. We needed to get out both in case the three guys who had attacked us had back-up, and before the cops arrived. I wasn’t sure which was the higher priority.
We turned onto the empty highway and sped away north. Neither of us spoke. There had been no time for conversation. Not much inclination either.
A little way down the road, though, the immediate pressure started to ease off and it became possible to think straight again. My growing feeling was that things were very, very complicated, much more so than I had thought. We were going to be stretched.
‘I let you down,’ Harry said suddenly. ‘Dropping off like that. All I can say is I’m sorry.’
‘Forget it.’
But it was true. He had let me down. Himself, too.
You could justifiably argue that there were mitigating circumstances, exhaustion was the big and obvious one. God only knew when Harry had last felt it was safe to close his eyes and get some proper sleep. He had to be running on empty. Even so, falling asleep on his watch could have been the end of us both.
‘You made up for it,’ I told him jocularly, ‘with some fancy shooting. That last guy had me cold until you came up with the answer.’
Harry chuckled. ‘You did well, too, Frank. You nailed two of the bastards. Without you, I would have been gone — chopped into little pieces probably. Did you see those bloody knives!’
He was right. Big hunting knives like the ones they’d been carrying are fearsome weapons. For me, knives are worse than handguns. You can survive a bullet, if you’re lucky, but the damage a knife does is nearly always fatal, as well as nasty. The people who carry knives know that and use it to terrorise people. It’s part of their stock-in-trade.
‘Back in the day, they used to shoot sentries who fell asleep on duty,’ Harry murmured in a conversational tone. ‘They should still do that, I reckon. There’s no excuse for it.’
‘Come on, Harry! Cut it out. No harm was done.’
‘Thanks to you.’
I’ll admit I was pretty pissed off about him drifting off, but I was even more pissed off that I hadn’t fully allowed for how tired he was. I should have insisted on standing first watch, instead of just going along with his suggestion.
Well, from now on, it was going to be different, I decided. We were going to do things my way. I had a job to do here, and nothing was going to get in the way of me doing it. Not Harry’s sensitivities, and not my slack thinking either.
‘Look, Harry, you’re exhausted. I could see that when we first met. I just didn’t take enough account of it, and I should have done. So it’s my fault as much as yours. Let’s just count our blessings. We came out of that cabin alive.’
He nodded. ‘You’re right. Let’s move on.’
‘One thing puzzling me, Harry. Those three guys were all Asian. What were they — Chinese?’
‘I don’t know. Probably.’
‘So what were they doing here?’
He shrugged. ‘Mercenaries. A hit squad up for hire maybe?’
Maybe. I couldn’t think of a better explanation.
We had been travelling nearly half an hour. Still nothing on the road. But if the police were looking for a solitary vehicle heading north, we wouldn’t be hard to spot. Time to earn my keep by dispensing some good advice.
‘Harry, we’re both tired — you more than me, probably. Also, we’re pretty damn conspicuous on this empty highway. I suggest we get off the road and into the forest a little way. Let’s hole up there and wait for daylight. There’ll be other vehicles on the road by then. We’ll be better off in traffic.’
‘Makes sense.’ Harry nodded. ‘I’m not thinking straight anymore. Let’s do that.’
We turned off onto a rough logging road. A couple of hundred yards along, Harry spun the wheel and crashed us through a wall of greenery and into a well of darkness behind the dense conifers lining the track. He switched off the truck’s headlights, engulfing us in blackness. I couldn’t see a damn thing.
‘Should be quiet enough here,’ Harry said.
‘You mad bugger!’ I shook my head and released the breath I’d been holding. Harry drove differently to me. ‘I just hope we’re not stuck,’ I told him.
‘If we are, we’ll just winch her out. This truck is dauntless, a real go anywhere kind of vehicle.’
I smiled without feeling all that amused and opened the door to check we were not in a swamp. It looked OK. I stepped down gingerly. With relief, I found I was standing on dry, firm ground covered by a thick blanket of fir and spruce needles.
‘This will do fine,’ I announced. ‘Let’s get our heads down.’
‘You awake?’ Harry asked eventually.
‘I am now,’ I complained, opening my eyes and experiencing the darkness all over again. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just after six. Dawn coming up. Time we were moving.’
I sat up, struggled out of the sleeping bag and peered out the window. It didn’t look to me as if dawn was anywhere near.
‘What d’you mean, dawn? I can’t see a damn thing!’
‘You’re just not used to the woods,’ Harry scoffed.
He switched on an overhead light. I watched him swing open the tailgate, climb out and disappear into the blackness. I followed his example, pushed through a thick screen of down-hanging fir branches and discovered a new day had indeed dawned.
After a much-needed pee, I examined the ground beneath and behind the truck. It was still firm, I was glad to see. Dry and hard. We weren’t going to need the winch.
Harry returned. ‘Ready?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ I told him. ‘I’ll see you out.’
‘No need. I’m just going to put her in reverse and blast my way out. The trees had better get out of the way.’
That was exactly what he did. The truck growled and snarled, and took off backwards, sending showers of dirt and forest debris in all directions. We were back on the highway a couple of minutes later, once again heading north.
‘You OK?’ Harry asked.
‘A few bruises. A bit stiff. And maybe some damage I haven’t found yet. But basically, yes, I’m OK. You?’
‘Me too.’
So, we were in agreement about that, at least.
‘Frank, we did real good back there, between us. I’m so very glad you’re on board.’
‘Pleased to hear it!’ I said with a wry smile.
It was good to find Harry in such fine spirits. Either winning the night-time fight in the cabin or getting a few hours’ sleep had done him a lot of good. A bit of both, probably.
His cheerful mood put me in a better frame of mind too. I even felt more optimistic about the journey still ahead of us. I guess that’s what the dawn of a new day can do for you.
Another reason I felt happier was that now I’d seen some of the devils pursuing Harry, and they were real. They weren’t just figments of an overwrought mind and imagination. That made a big difference.
I also understood better why Harry was so close to exhaustion. Sleep deprivation alone could have done it, and he would have had plenty of that. Add to that being hunted by a bunch of extremely tough and violent human beings and you were in nightmare territory. Harry had done exceedingly well to survive this long on his own.
‘How far have we got to go now?’ I asked with a yawn as Harry settled in behind the wheel.
‘Three or four hours.’
‘A couple of hundred miles?’
‘Yeah. Three hundred kilometres. A bit more, perhaps.’
I thought about that. ‘It seems strange, Canada using kilometres when the Americans still have miles.’
‘Maybe that’s the reason,’ Harry said with a grin. ‘There’s always been plenty of resistance to American influence this side of the border. It goes back to the United Empire Loyalists trekking north after the Yanks declared independence, I suppose. Then there was the sanctuary in Alberta given to Sitting Bull after the Battle of Little Bighorn, not to mention all the draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. There’s a lot of history to the relationship between Canada and the US.’
‘Interesting.’
It reminded me how little I knew about this big, friendly country.
His disquisition prompted me to ask another question I’d had buzzing around in my head. ‘How long have you been here, Harry?’
‘In Canada? Just a couple of months this time. But I wanted a place here to call my own, so I got it several years ago.’
He didn’t tell me anything more, but at least I had managed to squeeze a little more background information out of him.
Although I let it go for the moment, I did wonder how and why he had ended up in such a remote corner of this vast country. Questions. More of them all the time. But few answers. That was going to have to change. I needed to know far more than he’d given me so far, and I wanted to know it soon.
Chapter Twenty-Four
North of Campbell River, Highway 19 dropped down a notch and became a two-lane road.
‘From here on,’ Harry said, ‘there’s not a lot happens. Just logging, mostly. And fishing around the coastal edges. Very little settlement.’
I pulled out a map from the glove box. Looking at it, I could see what he meant. There was an awful lot of forest, stretching all the way to Port McNeill and then Port Hardy. The latter was a ferry terminal for the service to Prince Rupert, which I guessed made it pretty important, relatively speaking.
‘See what I mean?’ Harry said. ‘That’s why there’s a road up here now. Didn’t used to be one.’
There were a few place names, roughly half a dozen or so, dotted about on the map. Harry said they were mostly tiny fishing villages, some of them First Nation settlements, often best reached by boat. Sometimes only reached by boat. There were also a couple of places that had been small mining towns. No roads to speak of, except the one we were on. Otherwise, just rough logging roads — dirt or gravelled tracks usually — built for access to areas where timber was being harvested or replacement planting was going on.
‘You don’t want to travel on the logging roads,’ Harry warned, as if that was something I was contemplating. ‘Apart from them being pretty rough, the logging trucks have right of way on them — and they stop for no one.’
I was thinking it was tough, wild country. If you couldn’t find somewhere to hide away safely up here, you had to be in deep, deep trouble.
Another hour down the road, most of it spent in silence, Harry took his foot off the gas and the truck slowed. I glanced across at him, eyebrows raised.
‘Breakfast,’ he said. ‘You ready for some?’
I glanced at my watch, saw it was nearly eight o’clock and nodded. ‘That sounds good. Are you planning on shooting something edible?’
‘As if! There’s a good café just around the upcoming corner. It’s at the junction for Kelsey Bay, which used to be the ferry terminal until the highway got extended all the way to Port Hardy.’
I nodded. ‘And over breakfast you can tell me some more of what I need to know. It’s about time, Harry.’
It was a homely place, half of the building a café and the other half a lounge bar-cum-restaurant. A welcome stop-off for travellers like us and an absolute oasis for any folks managing to live in the surrounding forest, First Nation or otherwise. We settled in the café half of the building, on hard steel and plastic chairs set at Formica-topped tables. Very retro, although that might not have been intended.
The cheerful young woman who came to take our orders wished us a very good morning and assured us that the cloud would lift soon, and the drizzle turn to sunshine, to make it an even better day.
‘In that case,’ Harry said, ‘I’ll have my eggs sunny-side up, along with some bacon and pancakes.’
‘Maple syrup?’
‘Please.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Lots!’
‘You got it.’ She turned to me.
‘I’ll have what he’s having.’
‘OK. That everything, guys?’
‘And some orange juice for me, please,’ I added.
She nodded and started scribbling on her little notepad.
I leaned back, relaxed. It had started so well — until Harry made me wince with alarm.
‘Have you
heard anything about some trouble back there around Parksville? There was something on the radio, but I missed most of it.’
‘Trouble?’ She shook her head, looking doubtful. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘A shooting incident, it sounded like.’
She shook her head again. ‘I’ll ask Jerry in the kitchen. He hears all the news.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said quickly. ‘We probably got it wrong.’
She nodded and put her notepad in her pocket. ‘I’ll go get your coffee.’
Harry looked at me. ‘What?’
‘Take it easy, Harry. We don’t want her remembering us because we asked about that. What if someone comes in here later asking about two guys travelling in a truck?’
‘Jesus, Frank! Everybody travels in a truck around these parts.’
‘Even so,’ I said stubbornly.
He was silent for a moment or two. ‘You’re right, though. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Now, can we continue with your story? You told me about the debacle in Slovakia, and about retiring from the service, but that doesn’t explain much about now. For the umpteenth time, what the hell’s going on here?’
He mulled it over. It looked like he was trying to figure out where, exactly, to start. Either that or how to avoid telling me anything more at all. I waited patiently, but I wasn’t going to accept a brush-off this time. After last night, this little caper had got a whole lot more serious. People had died. Next time it might be us.
‘OK, Frank. You’ve earned admission to the private circle, especially after last night. And you do need to know more about what’s happening. I realise that.’
I kept quiet. I didn’t want him changing his mind and clamming up on me again.
‘Going back several years, I was working in Ukraine as part of an undercover NATO group that was trying to shore up the democratically elected, Western-orientated government there. The Russians were working their socks off to bring it down and keep a government in place that was aligned with them. You probably know the story, the politics of it?’
