Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  At the same time, Linder and Burt became hypervigilant to gaps in camp security and analyzed the best ways to exploit them across a variety of escape scenarios. Within two weeks, they developed a tentative escape plan. But since the plan required at least four and possibly five men to execute, their first and perhaps greatest risk was to select co-conspirators and to share the plan with them.

  Will Browning, they agreed, was the first candidate they would approach. His knowledge and skills acquired as a rancher and outdoorsman in Montana, as an insurgent in western Canada, and as a prisoner in several of the northern camps would be indispensable for the escape and the ensuing trek to freedom. Both Linder and Burt had grown to like and trust Browning, and each had heard him speak longingly of his family and ranch in Montana. They were nearly certain he would join them if invited.

  Charlie Yost was next on their list. He, too, was at home in the woods, likeable and trustworthy, a natural leader, and, as a foreman, could likely help them procure the tools and provisions they would need for the trip as well as cover their occasional absences to prepare for the breakout. But, at age fifty, Yost would be the oldest of them and might not be fit enough to keep pace. In addition, his trusted position as a foreman might deter him from escape because, if the attempt failed, he could expect punishment even more severe than that meted out to rank-and-file escapists.

  On the other hand, while it might be useful to recruit a younger man with greater speed and energy, the pair did not know any of the younger men well enough to approach them. Too many appeared to be dreamers or chatterers or perhaps even informants. A single wrong choice could land them all in the disciplinary unit before taking a single step outside the perimeter.

  When asked to join the team, Browning agreed without hesitation. Escape had been on his mind for nearly a year and, though he did not lack ideas to achieve it, he had not yet found suitable partners. Each time he came close to inviting someone, he had hesitated on a hunch or some strange circumstance had intervened. Many a night he had lain awake in a funk contemplating whether God or fate had turned against him and would never let him leave Camp N-320 alive.

  Buoyed by Browning’s acceptance, Linder and Burt decided to go forward with their pitch to Charlie Yost as soon as a suitable opportunity arose. While they knew Yost was a cautious man who tended to keep his own counsel and that he would likely be under close scrutiny from the camp security department, they estimated that, if given the right opportunity, Yost might bet his life on a chance to escape.

  The next day, shortly before the end of the workday, they set out to steal a plastic-handled handsaw by replacing it with a damaged saw of the same type that Burt had found half-buried in the snow several days before. While Burt left the work team to retrieve the broken saw from its hiding place and exchange it for the good one, neither Burt nor Linder noticed Yost observing them from a distance. When Linder headed toward the toolshed with the broken saw to declare it unusable and fetch a replacement, Yost moved in to intercept him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Yost challenged. The hard edge to the site supervisor’s voice took Linder by surprise.

  “To the toolshed. Broken saw,” he answered, holding up the damaged tool.

  Yost seized it from Linder and inspected the damaged handle and missing teeth. But he did not hand the saw back.

  “Who broke it?” he demanded.

  “I did,” Linder replied.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Just now.”

  “You mean today, this afternoon?”

  “That’s right,” Linder replied.

  “Don’t lie to me, Linder,” Yost warned.

  “I wouldn’t…”

  “Don’t go there. Don’t dig yourself any deeper,” the foreman added. “I know that saw. I’m the one who broke it.”

  Linder froze.

  “Now, why would someone clean up a busted old saw and turn it in for a new one?” Yost went on, as a teacher might question a pupil. “If I were a stoolie, I might think you were setting up for a breakout.”

  Linder kept a poker face.

  “You know, Linder, around here, being pegged as an escapist has a way of shortening a man’s life.”

  “What people think doesn’t matter if you succeed,” Linder answered.

  “That’s what every damned fool thinks who tries to escape,” Yost scoffed. “The trouble is, they all fail.”

  “It seems that most everybody here thinks escape is impossible,” Linder countered. “And yet they never stop talking about it. Listen, Charlie, I was a Party member and now I’m a traitor. I’m under a life sentence. The DSS will never let me out of here alive. The only option left is to change my fate.”

  “And you expect me to look the other way? What do you think will happen to the rest of us if you break out?”

  “Then why not come along?” Linder proposed.

  “Because even knowing that you plan to escape makes me a dead man if they catch you. It’s all or nothing, Linder, and I’m not ready to bet the farm on a weak horse.”

  “Then why not just forget we ever had this conversation? I won’t tell anyone about it and, if I’m caught, you can count on my not telling the security screws. But if I make it all the way to the final countdown, how about if I save a place for you? If I fail, you have nothing to lose, but if things look good, you have an option to come along at the last minute. Hell, I don’t even ask that you agree; just give me back the saw and let me walk.”

  “And if I decide not to go along, you’d really trust me not to rat on you?” Yost asked with narrowed eyes.

  “If you haven’t ratted by the time I’m ready to move out, yeah, I’ll take that chance,” Linder answered without hesitation.

  Yost’s pale blue eyes fixed Linder with a penetrating gaze.

  “Okay, here’s what I’ll do,” he said. “I won’t turn you in. But I won’t lift a finger to help you, either, and don’t ever count on me looking the other way if you screw up again. If you get caught attempting to escape, I’ll deny I knew anything. But if and when you’re ready to make your break, save a place for me. Who knows, circumstances may change….”

  Without waiting for a response, Yost handed Linder the saw. Then he turned on his heel and went back the same way he had come.

  Linder felt his heart race and his breathing become rapid and shallow while sweat moistened his brow despite the biting wind. For a moment, he felt too weak at the knees to continue up the hill to the tool shed. But a few minutes later he returned to his work team with a smile on his face and a spare saw in his gloved hand.

  He took Burt aside at the first opportunity to tell him about the conversation with Yost.

  “Incredible,” Burt replied, looking pale but unruffled on hearing the news. “What could be the odds of that broken saw being Yost’s and of you running into him like that? It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “So you think Yost already knew we had the saw?” Linder asked in disbelief.

  “No, he couldn’t have,” Burt replied, looking away as if deep in thought. “That’s the point. Nobody could have seen me find it or hide it. No, what I mean is that what just happened between you and Yost must have happened for a reason.”

  “Okay,” Linder answered. “So what’s the reason? And where do we go from here?”

  “It means the clock is ticking on our plans. Now that Yost knows what we’re up to, there’s no turning back.”

  * * *

  Over the next two weeks, Linder and Burt redoubled their efforts to acquire and hide the tools, food and spare clothing they would need for the escape. In addition to the purloined hand saw, they laid their hands on a kitchen knife, a length of rope, a partial spool of utility cord, a hot water bottle, a butane cigarette lighter, a small metal cooking pot, spare forks and spoons, a torn section of tarpaulin, and the liquid-filled compass that the old native, Scotty, had given Linder at the infirmary. For food, they laid aside a modest supply of dried bread crusts, wild
nuts and dried berries, foil-wrapped meal bars acquired by bartering medicinal herbs and potions, and a kilo of stolen oatmeal. Not much, but enough for a start, and already more than they could easily conceal.

  Since Burt had been a gardener and amateur naturalist before his arrest, he sought out like-minded prisoners who had learned how to forage for edible plants containing essential nutrients not available in the official camp diet. He also learned to create herbal infusions with healing properties. Though such foraging was difficult and time-consuming, those who practiced it claimed that the wild foods and medicinal herbs gave them a vital edge on survival.

  Burt was accordingly delighted when Scotty, the old Kaska native, was transferred to the timber-felling unit. Though Scotty refused to comment on the reason for the transfer, word soon arrived through the grapevine that he had lost his coveted slot at the sawmill for having led prisoners of native extraction in a work stoppage over an alleged affront to native customs.

  Some saw the reassignment as tantamount to a death sentence for the old man. But far from posing a hardship to Scotty, work in the forest seemed to agree with him. He clambered up and down hills all day long with the agility of a man half his age and handled a crosscut or an axe as well as any veteran lumberjack. Instead of placing his work team at a disadvantage in meeting its weekly quota, Scotty helped them to exceed it by enough to earn the team extra food rations.

  Within days of his arrival, Scotty began giving Burt and others a special tutorial in trapping wild game for food and fur and in brewing an evil-tasting pine bark extract to strengthen the heart and blood vessels. He even showed team members how to trade pelts with locally hired guards for vodka to be used in making energizing infusions from the woody roots of Devil’s Club and other members of the ginseng family.

  One evening after dinner outside Linder’s hut, Burt urged Linder to include Scotty in their escape plans. While the Kaska tribesman would be valuable for land navigation, unlocking the hidden resources of forest and tundra, and perhaps in enlisting aid from native tribes encountered en route, Linder was concerned that a man of Scotty’s age might delay the team’s movement.

  “Look,” Linder argued, “we only have room for one more man, and I’d rather pick someone younger, someone with plenty of energy who we can count on to take the point when we break new trail in rugged terrain or slog through heavy snow. The rest of us aren’t exactly spring chickens, you know.”

  “Don’t let Scotty’s weather beaten face fool you,” Burt answered. “Believe it or not, he’s the same age as Browning. And if it’s stamina you’re looking for, he’s a regular Sherpa. The way I see it, the real risk is in not taking him. Now that I know what to look for, I’ve been picking up hints that Scotty may have escape plans of his own this winter. And if he were to make his move before we did, we’d be back at square one.”

  By now, Linder and Burt knew that a fraternity of escapists existed in every camp and that these men possessed an uncanny ability to detect talk of escape. Such talk tended to ignite paranoia in every would-be escapist for fear that a rival might flee first and spoil his plans. In fact, any breakout attempt, successful or not, inevitably triggered a security crackdown that could last weeks or months before new lapses in official vigilance cropped up.

  But before Linder could speak up about Scotty, a blank expression suddenly came over Burt’s face. In the next moment, Scotty appeared as if out of thin air from behind Linder to stand beside Burt.

  “If I want go away, I can go any time,” he told the pair in a soft voice. “I stay because other Kaska men who cannot leave need help from me. But spirit guides want me now for other work far from here. They say you also chosen for work outside but you need help from Scotty. Because you good man, I help you. I come with you on long walk far from here.”

  Linder turned to Burt, his eyes wide with surprise, before addressing Scotty.

  “If it were anyone but you, the answer would be no,” he told the native. “But tell me one thing. Do you honestly believe that we can make it out of here alive?”

  “Escape not easy. But if you try, no man catch you. This I see for sure.”

  “Okay, you’re in,” Linder declared with a twisted smile. “Burt will be your contact, since you two already forage together. Welcome to the team.”

  * * *

  With advice from Scotty, Burt devised a more detailed escape plan, while Linder and Browning focused their efforts on gathering supplies. Together, they decided to carry out their plan as soon as the next major snowstorm hit. With spring still months away, vigilance among the guards would be low while the snow was deep, for snow made any movement slow and easy to track. So their plan required that they slip away at the start of the storm and let the snow cover their tracks. They would then need to make rapid progress before the weather cleared and stay burrowed underneath the snow until it was safe to reemerge. Improvised snowshoes would be essential. And to throw off their pursuers, they would set off in a direction other than toward Alaska, civilization, and the sea, where the authorities would expect them to go.

  Once they were on the move again, they would travel primarily during the extended dusk and dawn and by moonlight whenever they could. The primary risk of detection would come from trackers and from aerial surveillance. If detected by a tracker or his dog, they would have to outdistance him or face disaster, for killing the dog would do little good unless they also killed the tracker. And none of the four was willing to take another man’s life to save his own. On that they agreed.

  As for aerial surveillance, there would be little or no risk of satellite coverage, because most of America’s civilian and military reconnaissance satellites had been knocked out by solar flares during the Events or destroyed by the Chinese when U.S. forces joined the Russians in the ill-starred Manchurian War. Based on information gleaned during their days in government, Linder and Burt were confident that the country’s remaining surveillance satellites would not be made available to the Corrective Labor Administration for prisoner tracking and recapture.

  That left the threat from drones. Even during the height of the Manchurian War, old-timers at Camp N-320 recalled that the CLA deployed a small fleet of unmanned aircraft in Alaska for surveillance and interdiction of escaped prisoners. Fortunately, however, recent news from a clandestine short-wave radio in camp had reported increased Chinese naval and air patrol activity all across the Bering Strait and coastal Alaska. A few nights earlier, a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft had reportedly been shot down over Sitka, putting the region on heightened alert. If the reports were true, any available government drones set aside for tracking escaped prisoners from inland camps would likely be redeployed to the coast.

  Every day, Scotty consulted the skies for signs of an approaching storm while Burt consulted a homemade barometer he had constructed from a water glass and an inverted plastic bottle. At last, both men’s indicators agreed that a massive storm was on its way. Burt passed the information to Linder, who conferred with Browning. The four agreed to move their supplies into position the next morning for an escape from the logging site later in the day.

  Now that the time for action had come, Linder ran through his tasks for the next day and suddenly remembered his promise to Yost. While he had offered Yost the opportunity to join the escape, he and Burt had agreed not to mention the offer to Browning or Scotty until the last possible moment. In that way, Yost would not know about Browning and Scotty’s planned participation in the escape and they would not know of his.

  But now, Linder and Burt faced a dilemma. To renew the offer to Yost would put Browning and Scotty at added risk. At the same time, Yost’s cooperation could greatly improve the team’s chance of success. While Linder felt an obligation to keep his word to Yost, he could not do it in a way that violated his trust with the other team members.

  Only a half hour remained before curfew. If he was going to approach Yost before they left for work the next morning, now was the time. Linder slipped to the fl
oor from his bunk, put on his boots and hat, and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Burt asked as Linder passed his bunk.

  “To see a man about a dog,” Linder replied casually. But before Linder could pass, Burt reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

  “What dog?” Burt hissed.

  “The big one we promised to take for a walk,” Linder answered, leaning over Burt’s bunk and speaking softly so as not to be overheard.

  “Can’t he hold it till morning?” Burt replied with an anxious look.

  “I’ve got a feeling about this,” Linder asserted. “If there’s an issue, I’d rather know now.”

  “Okay, it’s your call,” Browning said as Linder rose to leave.

  Linder walked directly from the hut to the latrines but returned by way of Yost’s hut. As Yost often received visitors from men on his team, none of the other residents appeared to pay much attention to Linder as he made his way to Yost’s bunk, located in a corner of the hut. As this particular hut was reserved for supervisors, foremen and trusties, the bunks were spread out for added privacy and most were separated from one another by makeshift partitions consisting of army blankets hung from the tops of the triple-decker bunks. Linder found Yost darning a worn sock and stood over him until he drew the foreman’s attention.

  “Remember the broken saw?” Linder asked in a low voice without introduction.

  “I do,” Yost answered, letting the sock fall to his lap.

  “Still interested?