Ryce grabbed his pack, and hurried around the end of the cabin followed by Ted, Craig, and Hank. Before he dropped his pack with the others, he pulled several LED flashlights from it. Like a cat sneaking up on a bird, Ryce approached the door of the cabin.
For the next hour, Ryce and his team carefully inspected the cabin. They saw indications it had been occupied, but nothing pointed to the three murderers who lived in the cabin. There were no signs of weapons. No empty cartridges on the floor, no reloading equipment, no paper targets.
A wood-burning stove was positioned next to an obviously electric refrigerator. When Hank appeared to be reaching to open the refrigerator door, Ryce stopped him.
“We have made it this far without blowing ourselves up. Don’t open anything. We don’t need to see if they have any bacon left from breakfast.”
Ryce noticed the kitchen floor near a china cabinet was severely scratched. The wall behind the cabinet was common to a small bedroom. An open closet extended halfway down the wall, ending where Ryce thought the cabinet started. The closet was nearly twice as deep as Ryce thought a bedroom closet should be. He returned to the kitchen.
“OK, let’s slide the cabinet, preferably without blowing the kitchen into millions of pieces.”
Hidden in the wall behind the cabinet was a wooden hand-built ladder extending from a three-foot hole in the ground. After pressing the switch on his flashlight, Ryce carefully inspected the ladder. It did not appear to have any trigger points. He pointed at Jimmy and then down the hole.
When Jimmy did not set off an explosion, Ryce asked Ted and Craig to each pick a door and watch for someone returning to the cabin. He then instructed Barry and Hank to follow him down the hole.
The ladder was more than twenty feet long, and ended at a dirt floor. Jimmy was waiting at the bottom with his flashlight illuminating a tunnel leading away from the cabin. The tunnel was tall enough for Ryce to walk without crouching and wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The walls and roof were heavily cribbed. Someone familiar with mining techniques had constructed this tunnel. Ryce carefully counted his steps as he led the group down the tunnel. It was close to one hundred yards long.
The tunnel ended in a room approximately ten feet square, with large posts supporting a wooden roof. A generator with a flexible pipe connecting the exhaust to the roof was positioned along one wall. A large open tube descended from the roof in the center of the room. Ryce walked to the tube and looked up. There was a hint of light at the end of the tube.
Ryce turned to Jimmy. “Take a hike up to the trees and see where these tubes come out.”
Jimmy turned and trotted from the room.
Ryce continued to search the room and then saw something that set him on edge. As he was sprinting down the tunnel with Barry and Hank, Ryce shouted for Ted and Craig to get the hell away from the cabin.
Ryce, Barry, and Hank exited the cabin just as they heard a thump and saw a cloud of smoke erupt from the forest behind the cabin. Ryce immediately recognized the sound of a “Bouncing Betty” anti-personnel land mine and increased his speed toward the dust.
The Bouncing Betty was so named because it was designed to jump up approximately two feet when triggered. When it reached the end of a small trigger chain, it exploded, sending thousands of ball bearings in a circle of destruction.
Jimmy’s left leg had been raggedly severed at the knee. His right leg was still attached, but he would certainly lose it. Hank and Barry began triage. Ryce turned to find somewhere the helicopter could land. The area behind the cabin was too confined. Ryce began to run toward the stream. The only area large enough to land a Chinook was on the road where it forked to go to the cabin or the lake.
Ryce grabbed the microphone on his combat radio and pressed the send button.
“We have a casualty. Jimmy tripped a Bouncing Betty. I will set up a GPS tracker in the only place we can bring in a Chinook.”
He checked his watch. “If you haven’t left yet, Tanya, bring the Suburban to the cabin.”
The first return transmission was from Phil. He was already in the air. Phil had two top-notch medics on the helicopter with trauma equipment. Ryce felt confident Jimmy would get the best care possible. Doctor Pen had sent her best people with the trauma helicopter. They could patch up Jimmy well enough to keep him alive long enough to get him to the nearest hospital. And, Ryce had seen medics at work in Afghanistan. Hank and Barry were two of the best. They would keep Jimmy alive until Phil arrived.
The second transmission was from Tanya, who said they were unhooking the trailer. Ryce heard a low rumble and turned to see several trees disappear in a cloud of dirt. The incriminating evidence in the tunnel had just been buried under five meters of earth. Ryce wondered if the cabin was going to be destroyed as well.
Ryce looked across the stream to the road and then slowly stepped into the frigid water. The stream was only about a foot deep where it crossed the damaged culvert, but it was more than fifty feet wide and cold.
Ryce was waiting at the pick-up point when the Suburban arrived. Phil announced he was still six minutes out, which gave Ryce plenty of time to retrieve Jimmy. Ryce pulled open the driver’s door and asked Tanya to hop in the back. He looked back across the stream. There were no openings that would allow him to turn the Suburban around. He drove the Suburban a few meters in the direction of the lake, slammed the gearshift into reverse, and punched the gas pedal. As he was splashing across the stream, Ryce hoped his modifications to the exhaust system would prevent drowning the engine.
While Ted, Hank, Craig, and Barry loaded Jimmy into the vehicle, Ryce looked back across the stream. He had managed to keep the Suburban out of the deep water on the upstream side of the crossing. Moreover, he had negotiated the gap between the explosive woodshed and the cabin. He was still in one piece.
The cargo door on the Suburban slammed shut, and Ryce heard a voice. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
He slammed the gear lever into drive and punched the gas once more. The overpowered Suburban began to fishtail in the meadow grass.
Ryce got the vehicle under control long enough to stop, point to the jump packs, and shout, “We need those packs.”
Ramona and Tanya tumbled out, attempted to grab two packs at a time, and decided to make two trips.
As they drove past the cabin, Ramona was heard to mumble, “I don’t remember them being that heavy.”
Ryce and Phil arrived at the pick-up area at the same time. Jimmy was placed in the helicopter, Phil gave a thumbs up, and they were gone.
Ryce looked over at Tanya. “What happened to your escorts?”
Ramona laughed. “They discovered where you told us to park has gotta be a ten for fishing. When you got on the radio, they said a Suburban does not need four drivers, and they would have a few more minutes to eliminate the fish population. They also mentioned the camp needed a clean-up.”
Ryce looked over at Ted, Hank, Craig, and Barry. “Merge Jimmy’s pack into ours and then give Tanya any of his personal items.”
Halfway through the merging process, the cabin began to erupt. Ryce was surprised it was not a large explosion. It looked like several small charges, strategically placed, had gone off in a pre-assigned sequence. Had the cabin occupants actually kept the destruction of the forest to a minimum? It appeared they had, except for the new, six-foot wide ditch leading from the former cabin to the former generator room.
When they finished merging the packs, Barry handed Jimmy’s pack to Tanya, and then Ryce kissed her.
“We need to catch up with O2. As soon as I put on a new pair of socks and boots.”
Ramona laughed. She knew about hiking in wet boots and socks. She had seen some pictures of O2 with a pair of boots tied to his pack, next to socks hung on parachute cord. He told her he always had one pair of boots and socks getting dry. Ramona smiled as she watched Ryce tie his boots to his pack and fashion a clothesline for his socks.
Tanya and Ramona return
ed to the Suburban, and drove back to where they had been camping.
Ryce heard his radio buzz.
“This is O2. How’s Jimmy?”
Ryce pressed the send button. “He’s going to lose both legs at the knees, but the medics say Barry and Hank did a good job of getting tourniquets on his legs before he lost too much blood. We will be leaving the cabin, or what is left of it, in five. It just exploded and didn’t burn much. If the laptop group heard the explosion, they will know someone is on to them. Watch yourself.”
Ryce got the usual double click in reply, swung his pack onto his back, and turned toward the lake.
Chapter 33
As he hiked past the lake, Ryce remembered O2 was carrying a GPS tracker monitored by the thermal satellite. The tracker emitted an ID code displayed on the thermal image. Ryce radioed John with the code and asked him to keep an eye on all three groups. Within a few minutes, O2 was heard on the radio.
“Thank you for reminding me about the tracker. I just activated it.”
Ryce heard John’s voice on the radio. “The tracker just showed up on the satellite image. I have three groups on the display.”
Ryce keyed his radio. “John, can you get an idea of how close O2 is to Dianne? I would like them about three miles apart.”
After a few moments, John keyed his radio. “It looks like O2 is less than three miles from Dianne. She isn’t moving fast at all.”
Ryce heard O2 chuckle. “I will slow it down a little, but if I slow it down too much, some of my team will fall asleep on the trail.”
Ryce heard a new voice over his radio.
“Good morning, Director Dalton. This is Dexter Reynolds again. It is nice talking to you once more. Congratulations on your new position. I am really sorry to hear one of your men was injured.
“JBTF-Canada has access to your thermal satellites and is monitoring your progress. If you need anything, just let me know. Reynolds out.”
The plan was to allow the laptops to cross the border, and then have JBTF-Canada follow the laptops to the hand-off point. O2 and Ryce were primarily involved as a backstop to keep the group from returning unnoticed to the US. The theory was simple. Let the laptops cross the border, let them get picked up by the next level in the food chain, and then follow that level as far as possible. The border crossing was extremely remote, but easy. How hard is it to step over a sagging three-strand barbed wire fence?
If the reports John had gotten from the FBI were accurate, the data on the laptops were sensitive, but outdated and unreliable. And, extremely secure. The laptops without the LoJack software contained a program which performed a secure erase on the hard drives if the unlock code was not entered within a preset time. Eventually, someone up the ladder would boot up the laptops to see what they had gotten. They would have nothing. If they were in possession of the laptop with the LoJack program, they would boot up the laptop, and it would report its position.
Although he was perhaps less than two miles behind O2, Ryce set a moderately fast pace. Dianne was traveling with three killers. Ryce was more than confident O2’s team could handle anything Dianne or her companions could throw at them. Deep down, however, Ryce wanted a piece of the action, if there was any action. Even if Dianne could average 2 mph and hike for six hours a day, the laptops would be on American soil for two more days. Ryce smiled. There was plenty of time for Dianne and her friends to make a mistake. Especially her three killer friends.
John’s group provided constant updates of the distance between Ryce and O2, and between O2 and Dianne. A little after 2:00 PM, Ryce heard Tanya’s voice.
“O2, shut it down. The laptops are not moving.”
Ryce smiled. Tanya had a nice radio voice.
At 5:00 PM, Ryce heard Ramona’s voice. “Ryce, you might consider slowing down. O2 is close enough to throw a rock at you.”
When Ryce reached for his sidearm, he heard O2 chuckle. “You’ll never get to it in time.”
Ryce looked up and laughed. O2 had grown into a large bush.
O2 led Ryce’s team toward a moderately concealed campsite. When they were twenty feet from the campsite, O2 looked over at Ryce.
“How’s your arm?”
Ryce frowned. “It’s still attached, but the pack is killing it. It hurts all the time. I took some over-the-counter medication. Anything stronger is going to affect my judgment.”
As he scanned the area, Ryce wondered what he had gotten himself into. Eleven armed men in camo sitting around a fire was an obvious indication something was not right. Ryce pulled out his cell phone and began taking pictures. Three of O2’s men were standing along the stream. Only one of them held up a stringer of three fish for Ryce to photograph. O2 said the rest were going to starve to death.
The stream that paralleled the trail ran straight north. Ryce had studied all of the Internet map programs he could find but this stream was not listed on any of them. And, he had decided not to purchase a paper map; it would take up too much of his limited pack space. Where he was standing, the stream was ten feet wide and perhaps two feet deep. The streambed was filled with medium-sized rocks, a perfect cover for trout.
Ryce looked around the campsite. A very small fire was burning in a very small pit surrounded by very large river rock. The fire was directly under a tree that would dissipate the smoke. Ryce could see someone had collected a small pile of dry wood. The six sleeping bags for O2’s team had been unrolled and covered with camo netting. From about fifty feet, the camp was probably going to be unseen.
Ryce positioned his sleeping bag, rolled it out, set the night watch schedule, and then pulled an MRE out of his pack. C-Rats were OK for the observation post at the cabin where smells were not allowed. For a test one evening, Tanya had used only the ingredients in MREs for their dinner. It had actually turned out very tasty. Ryce chuckled. It would be nice to have Tanya with him now, but perhaps not for fixing dinner.
Ryce and O2 had rank, so Ryce took the first evening watch and gave O2 the last watch. They would not get their night broken up by standing a watch.
O2 was about half way through his hour when Ryce got up and began stringing his pole. He placed his radio earphone in his ear and asked for a morning report. According to the operator watching the thermal satellite, there were four blobs approximately two miles from Ryce’s position. A fifth blob had separated from the group and was located almost a mile closer to the Canadian border. Ryce wondered who it was and why they had broken off contact with the main body of Dianne’s group.
As the sun came up, Ryce set up the solar panels to recharge the batteries for the communication devices. He had learned the hard way that recharging with the solar panels was slow. He had five panels, with one panel modified to clip onto a backpack. The clip-on panel was given to the one with the almost dead battery.
Ryce found the block of salt pork he always carried, sliced off a sliver, and threaded it onto his hook. Within minutes, he had three very nice trout on his tree branch stringer and six people watching him.
He pulled the salt pork out of his pocket. “You cut a piece of salt pork that sort of looks like a worm. Be sure to hang it at least an inch off the bottom of the hook.”
Ryce tossed the block across the stream to the closest person and then scrambled to bring in the trout now tugging on his line. He cleaned his fish, pulled out his frying pan, and began cooking the fish. Within minutes, he had several of the team in line to use the frying pan for their fish. Somehow, no one besides Ryce had remembered that a frying pan, butter, and lemon juice are necessities on a fishing trip.
Everything was packed up when John announced Dianne and her four blobs were moving. The river rocks were returned to the river from the fire pit, and the grass was replaced.
O2 looked over at Ryce. “This is your dance, but I suggest we send out two points and split the trail.”
Ryce smiled. In the Rangers, they called it the “Rattle Snake,” also known as the “Forked Tongue.” Ryce picked one of his team an
d one of O2’s. They climbed into their packs and started up the trail.
Ryce jumped through some mental hoops and concluded they were about a third of the way to the border. He keyed his radio.
“Dexter, you might have a better idea of distances around here than we do. How far are we from the border?”
There was a short pause and then Dexter’s voice on the radio.
“The front-running group is about fifteen miles from the border, and I have a GPS tracker showing up about two miles behind the first group.”
The day progressed without incident. In addition to John’s group at the campground, the Canadian branch of the JBTF had an agent who was constantly watching the satellite display. Ryce would not be surprised by anything. When Dianne and her group stopped for lunch, Ryce’s group stopped for MREs.
Ryce was notified at 3:00 PM Dianne had stopped. Had she stopped for the night? He took a chance she had, and pulled his point men back.
When Dianne had not moved by 5:00 PM, Ryce rolled out his sleeping bag, assembled his fishing pole and attacked the stream. Within a few minutes, he had hooked three very nice trout. He did not plan to starve to death on this campout.
At 6:00 PM, John notified Ryce there were two hot spots approaching Dianne’s position from the north. Ryce picked two of his group and sent them up the trail for early warning. He didn‘t want to be surprised if the two hot spots did not stop at Dianne’s location.
Ryce was informed at 7:00 PM the two hot spots had stopped moving very close to Dianne’s position. Both John and Dexter were having trouble keeping the spots separated Ryce called back his two point men, set the watch schedule and then snuggled into his sleeping bag.
The Alberta Connection Page 20
