“When?” Yost asked.
“Soon.”
“Your timing is good. How soon?”
Linder looked to both sides to make doubly sure that no one was within earshot.
“Tomorrow.”
“What else do I need to do?” Yost asked, scarcely moving his lips.
“Nothing. I’ll see you at work and fill you in on the details then. Oh, and bring a snack.”
Yost picked up the paperback and returned to his reading. “Sweet dreams,” he replied without looking up.
“And you,” Linder answered before heading for the door.
* * *
The next morning, before breakfast, Linder approached Browning and Scotty separately and told them of the promise he had made to Yost weeks before after being discovered with the broken saw. Without disclosing that he had already renewed the agreement with Yost, he asked each man for permission to speak to Yost at the logging site and re-extend his invitation to join the escape.
While neither Browning nor Scotty appeared happy to hear of the hidden contingency with Yost, each agreed that, once Linder’s offer had been made, it would be dangerous to attempt escape under Yost’s nose without offering him the opportunity to go with them. Imagining Yost’s choice between possible freedom if he joined the escape and certain punishment if he stayed behind, they expected Yost to come along, and in the end, they were pleased at the prospect of having him.
Upon arriving at the parade ground for morning roll call, Linder looked in vain for Yost and the other worksite leaders at the front of the assemblage. Instead, he spotted the Deputy Commandant and his top security aides. He watched with growing alarm as Bracken approached the podium and raised a bullhorn to address the prisoners.
“As some of you know, this camp has been assigned to supply laborers for the new expansion at the tungsten mine just north of here. Last week the new shafts at MacTung were cleared to start production and the mine’s general manager has called on us to provide a hundred men to work the deposits there.
“Effective today, the following work teams will be transferred to the MacTung mine: from Grounds and Maintenance, Team A3. From Recycling, Team B2. From Logging, Teams A1, A2 and A3. These teams will remain on the parade ground after roll call to receive their new orders. The Team leaders and foremen involved have been notified and will direct their men to prepare for the transfer. Prisoners dismissed.”
Linder and Burt were on Logging Team A2.
The moment he heard of the prisoner transfer, Linder’s guts started to churn. He cast a sidelong glance at Burt, whose eyes were closed and his face white as a corpse. Their transfer to the mine was to be immediate. Even if the storm came as expected, they would not be at the logging site to make use of it. There would be no escape today.
At Bracken’s order, the teams assigned to the mining site remained at attention until the last prisoners walked out the gate for work. Moments later, Captain Holzer and the leaders of the teams selected for transfer emerged from the administration building and stood before the assembled men, while Bracken issued final orders.
“You will have fifteen minutes to collect your belongings into one regulation rucksack and report back here for the march to the mining site. Latecomers will be sent straight to the disciplinary unit. Dismissed!”
Linder, Burt, and Browning retreated to their hut to pack their bags, leaving the cached escape supplies intact in their hiding places. As they left Hut J-6 for the last time, with their limbs feeling heavy as lead, the first fine flakes of the approaching blizzard swirled around them.
* * *
For more than a week, Linder was unable to find Yost again to speak with him about the aborted escape. Not only were they assigned to different shifts, they slept in different huts. On occasion, Linder would catch a glimpse of Yost trudging in or out of the mine while he slogged in the opposite direction.
Similarly, while Linder, Burt and Browning all worked the same shift, they were assigned to different sections of the mine. After only a few days of training, Linder alternated between operating a pneumatic drill to bore holes for explosive charges and wielding a pickaxe or scaling bar to remove loose rock from walls and ceilings. The heat, noise, dust, and danger required his utmost concentration. When rest breaks occurred, he usually collapsed on the spot to conserve energy until work resumed.
Only at night, in the sleeping hut, did Linder have an opportunity to talk to Browning and Burt, as none of them had seen Scotty during the week since the transfer. Because the three were assigned to different sections of the hut and did not know their bunkmates well, they were careful not to speak of the aborted escape except in the most cryptic terms and then only if they were certain of being undisturbed. Even then, they found little to say to one another, except to confirm that their supplies remained hidden back at Camp N-320 and that they still intended to escape somehow, once they found their bearings at the mine and could concoct a new plan. At this point, their morale was so low and their new work so draining that the three men were beyond commiserating.
As it happened, Burt knew a good deal about the MacTung mine from his former work on national defense issues. As Burt explained, MacTung’s strategic military importance lay in being one of only two tungsten mines in North America and by far the largest source of tungsten concentrate in the Western world.
Tungsten’s hardness, density, high melting point, and conductivity made it indispensable for cutting and drilling tools, turbine blades, electronics and advanced military ordnance, where tungsten could substitute for depleted uranium. Years before the outbreak of the Manchurian War, China and Russia had stopped selling tungsten on the world market, causing tungsten prices to soar. Upon America’s entry into that disastrous war, the President-for-Life nationalized the MacTung mine and ordered the CLA to supply as many technicians and laborers from among its prisoners as might be required to step up production. But even after America retreated from Manchuria, the MacTung Mine and its nearby companion mine, CanTung, remained vital to America’s national defense and were ordered to expand further.
While the U.S. Interior Department and Natural Resources Canada searched the market for scarce mining equipment for the two state-owned mines, the CLA scoured its labor camps for qualified workers. In the crush to expand production, civilian labor was put on forced overtime and replaced by convict labor when output fell short. The day after the prisoners from Camp N-320 arrived at MacTung, they were given rudimentary training in mining operations and assigned to shifts. As at Camp N-320, a prisoner’s rations depended on meeting output quotas. And, as at the logging sites, prisoners were worked nearly to exhaustion.
One evening toward the end of their first week at MacTung, when their shift was brought to the surface early because of a ventilation system breakdown, Linder, Burt, and Browning sat together after the evening meal in their sleeping hut and stared into each others’ weary eyes. They sat cross-legged in a corner, away from where their bunkmates were gathered around the stove, and huddled their heads together while going through the motions of playing poker.
“What the hell happened?” Browning asked, breaking the silence at last. “A few more hours and we could have made it out.”
“I don’t know,” Burt answered. “Maybe Bracken got wind of a breakout from the logging site and ordered the transfer to head it off. After all, all three logging teams were transferred but only one team each from Recycling and Maintenance.”
Both men looked at Linder.
“Could Yost have ratted on us?” Browning asked.
“Possibly, but I find it hard to believe,” Linder answered with a note of defensiveness.
“But we all agreed to wait till we got to the worksite before offering him a chance to come along. We didn’t even discuss it until just before roll call,” Browning protested. “How could Yost have told anyone if he didn’t know we were going?”
“Actually, I told Charlie about it the night before,” Linder confessed in a low voice, looking Browning stra
ight in the eye.
“But you had no right!” the Montanan sputtered.
“Now calm down, Will,” Linder continued. “I went to his hut just before lock-up because I didn’t want to risk moving our supplies to the site the next morning if Yost refused to go with us. But Yost said yes, and everything I know about him tells me he would never sell us out. Not for anything.”
“Warren told me he was going to see Yost and I agreed,” Burt concurred, “which makes us both responsible. But think about it: if Charlie betrayed us, why aren’t we lying face down in some snowdrift with bullets in our heads?”
“Okay, okay, I want to trust Charlie, too,” Browning conceded. “It’s just so damned frustrating.”
“So we’re back to square one,” Burt concluded wearily. “We’ve lost access to our supplies. We’re in a new environment that’s more closely controlled than ever. And we’re all getting weaker by the day. Let’s face it: if we don’t catch a break, it could be game over real soon.”
“The only breaks we can count on are the ones we make ourselves,” Linder replied, gathering up the cards from the rough-hewn wood floor. “I think that what we need most right now is more intel. Let’s keep our heads and see if we can make contact with Yost or Scotty. They may know something we don’t.”
“I’ll work on tracking down Scotty if the two of you can link up with Yost somehow,” Burt offered.
“I know people in Yost’s hut,” Linder agreed. “I’ll see if there’s some way to catch him there, or maybe pass him a message to come see us.”
* * *
Two days later, Linder returned for work in the evening in time to wait for Charlie Yost outside his sleeping hut before Yost joined the march to the mine for the graveyard shift. Linder watched and waited in the relentless subzero wind, his hood and neck gaiter gathered closely around his stubbled face. To distract himself, he looked up at a sky filled with more stars than he ever could have imagined before coming to the Yukon, with the Milky Way looking like a vast plume of smoke rising to the heavens. High above, the Northern Lights played like a luminous green curtain fluttering in the breeze. Spotting Yost leaving the hut, he stepped in beside him and kept pace.
“Long time, no see, Charlie,” Linder began, examining Yost’s face carefully for any signs of defensiveness or guilt.
“Yeah, the world has changed a bit since our last talk,” Yost replied. “You must be wondering what happened. Hell, I’m still wondering and I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you suspected me of turning you in.”
“It’s not that we suspect you, Charlie,” Linder answered, raising his voice to be heard above the roaring wind. “We just want to know what on earth happened.”
“What happened is that Bracken went crazy on us. Do you remember the day when I came to visit Roger Kendall at the infirmary?”
Linder nodded.
“Well, it was no coincidence that Bracken assigned Roger and you and every other prisoner with any connection to Cleveland to the logging unit,” Yost explained. “From what I could see, Bracken and the DSS hoped that, by throwing us all together, somebody who knew about the Cleveland bank job would start talking. Then, around the time you left the infirmary and Roger entered the terminal ward, it seems that Bracken heard from one of the loggers that Eaton’s men had recovered the last of the loot long ago and packed it off to Europe before his death.”
“I don’t get it,” Linder interrupted. “If Bracken had sources among the loggers, why would he send them all to MacTung and lose the chance to learn more?”
“Because he had been pressuring his informants for months to find out what happened to the bank money,” Yost explained. “And when his deadline passed without getting what he wanted, he had to follow through. Besides, if it were true that all the loot had left the country, there would be little to gain from continuing.”
“Okay, let me get this straight,” Linder replied. “When I asked you to escape with us, you knew about Bracken’s deadline?”
“Of course,” Yost replied.
“But you said nothing.”
“I was hoping Bracken would give us one more day.”
“But you also might have turned us in to save yourself from going to MacTung,” Linder noted.
Yost gave Linder a puzzled look, as if Linder had called him by someone else’s name.
“You ought to know me better than that,” he chided. Then he brightened and asked, “So tell me straight, do we have a new plan yet?”
“Not quite,” Linder replied. “But we will.”
“Then count me in,” Yost declared. “Now that I’m not responsible for a work team any more, there’s nothing left to hold me back.”
“We’ll need to get assigned to the same work team again, for starters,” Linder noted, his mind racing ahead. “Or at least to the same hut, so we can talk.”
“Leave that to me,” Yost assured.
After dinner that night, Linder found Burt and Browning deep in conversation on Burt’s bunk, with no one else close by, and was about to interrupt them to share news of his meeting with Yost, when Burt held up a hand to silence him.
“You’ll never believe this, but I think we got our break tonight,” Burt whispered.
“Is that so?” Linder answered doubtfully. “What kind of a break?”
“I found Scotty,” Burt answered with an excited glow in his eyes. “He’s got a job as a loader on the trucks that shuttle supplies between here and the main camp. And he says he might be able to recover our stash of supplies and send them to us if we tell him where to find them.”
“That’s a tall order,” Browning added. “But if he can, it just might put us back in business. “Now, all we have to do is find a way out of this damned place.”
* * *
By the following week, the ever-resourceful Scotty had collected most of the provisions that he, Linder, Burt, and Browning had put aside for their escape and delivered them to the mining site, where new hiding places had been found. By now, however, the men were so weakened that it took all their resolve not to raid the extra rations on the spot.
In another stroke of good fortune, Yost had been promoted to foreman on the strength of his prior work record and managed to have Linder and the other escapists assigned to his team. Yost used his authority to rotate his co-conspirators through every shaft and room in the mine so that they had first-hand reconnaissance of the entire underground facility to match Scotty’s mapping of MacTung’s aboveground layout.
After many nights of study and deliberation, the team was able to work out a detailed escape plan similar to the one they had devised at the logging site, featuring an evacuation route toward the east, over the Mackenzie Range, rather than westward toward Alaska and the sea, the route favored by conventional wisdom among both prisoners and captors. This had been Scotty’s proposal, not only because their pursuers could be expected to search more actively along the South Canol Road to the west, but also because, unlike the white man, he knew how to live off the land and could enlist the help of any native peoples they might come across.
The only problem was that, unlike Camp N-320, where they had worked at a remote logging site surrounded by only a basic security fence, their work at MacTung was underground. More than that, the mine lay within an impenetrable security perimeter featuring electrified fences, floodlights, remote sensors, canine patrols, and guard towers manned by snipers with orders to shoot to kill. Despite their best efforts, they had not yet discovered a way to breach that perimeter.
As the winter wore on and one storm after another descended on the mine, each one promising to erase all traces of an escape, the men met more and more frequently to find a way out before spring. Each week they considered new theories and took on individual assignments to explore possible lapses in the site’s security, even at the risk of drawing unwanted attention to their efforts. What each of them felt but none wanted to admit was that time was running out for a winter escape and they might not survive long enough
to try another.
It was on the eve of yet another Arctic storm that Linder drilled his borehole, packed it with explosives, and stood by while the technician set the primer and secured the area for the next blast in one of the new exploratory shafts at the western edge of the mine. Since it was the end of the three-to-eleven shift on a Friday night, the civilian technician planned to leave for the weekend directly after detonating the charge. Perhaps he had been careless in measuring the charge, or perhaps the rock was of a different quality in this part of the mine, but the blast had an outsized effect and caused the ceiling to cave in, both ahead of and behind where Linder took shelter.
When the last rock fragment came to rest and the worst of the dust had cleared, Linder’s relief at having escaped serious injury was soon overtaken by a growing panic that he might suffocate. By the light of his headlamp, he groped along the walls for any openings in the direction of the main shaft but found none. Nonetheless, he continued exploring and, to his great surprise, found a gap between the mine’s ceiling and a tall pile of debris. Climbing to the top of the pile, he saw that the opening led to a smaller shaft that he had not known to exist.
Linder cleared away the rock and crawled through. The passage ahead was straight and narrow, just under head height and sloping gradually upward. Relieved to have found the air clear of smoke and dust and fresher than where he had been, he moved further away from the cave-in, examining the shaft’s walls and floor more closely as he went. It looked crude and unfinished, as he imagined an exploratory shaft or an airway might be, except that this shaft had not appeared in any blueprint of the mine that he had been allowed to view.
After another ten or fifteen meters, the passage opened into a high chamber. Linder looked up and, in the weak light of his headlamp, saw what looked like an iron grate above his head. Here the air was cold and fresh. He switched off his headlamp, and when he saw a speck of pale moonlit sky, his heart leapt. With energy he did not know he possessed, he climbed up the steep rock wall and pushed with all his strength against the grate. It moved aside and he found himself wedged within a rocky crevice that looked out over the mine’s frozen runoff pond, the distant peaks of the McKenzie range and no trace of a perimeter fence in between.
Exile Hunter Page 27
