Rhee, then working on a snow-clearing team, had discovered the corpse the next day, stripped it clean, and reburied it. Because Horvath frequently left his job without permission, as Rhee later learned from a prisoner who worked in payroll, the shift foreman had assumed that the engineer had run off to drink his wages in Ross River and, after two days, the mine had deleted Horvath from its payroll without reporting him missing. Since the engineer was not declared dead, Rhee pointed out, the documents might still be good.
“Take a close look at the photo,” Rhee suggested. “It’s not much of a likeness, but he certainly looks a hell of a lot more like you than me.”
Linder laughed. “Some resemblance. The guy was butt ugly.”
“Yeah, but ugly in a nice sort of way. And he’s about your age. Beyond that, he’s definitely not Asian,” Rhee replied with a smile. “Go on, you take it. Maybe it will come in handy down there in Utah.”
Rhee handed it over, and Linder thanked him. The conversation ended with each man retreating into his own thoughts until they fell asleep huddled close to the warming fire.
* * *
The next morning, they woke before dawn, added fuel to the banked embers, and fetched some drinking water from the river. While they waited for the fire to heat the water, they discussed how far it would be to the next rail yard, where they might be able to safely board a southbound freight train.
“I don’t see any rail yards on the map,” Linder noted, “but there’s a town a few clicks south of here. If it doesn’t have a yard or a siding, maybe the next one will. Or maybe a train might slow down enough at a crossing for us to catch it.”
“Then let’s do it,” Rhee agreed. “It’s a long way to Edmonton. We’re bound to find something before too long.”
After striking camp, the men headed back toward the tracks and then skirted them as they proceeded south. Since the terrain was unsuited for farming and no homesteads were in sight, they decided to keep moving all day. Late in the afternoon, with the sun sitting low on the horizon, they heard the dull rush of water ahead, which seemed confusing because rivers this far north would normally still be frozen. Before long, they spotted a drop-off and a multi-span wooden railroad trestle stretching across it. The men looked down and saw that the river surged with slabs, chunks, and lumps of ice that until recently had likely formed a smooth sheet over the river. The sound was louder than any rapids and reminded Linder of a boyhood visit to Niagara Falls.
“All right, what now?” Rhee asked with a discouraged look. “There’s no way we’re getting across that mess.”
“We could wait till the ice is gone and try to swim it,” Linder suggested weakly.
“Too wide. We’d never make it,” Rhee replied.
“We could search the riverbank for a boat to steal.”
“Not likely.”
“Or head over to the highway and make a mad dash across that bridge, along with the cars and trucks,” Linder offered. “Major risk of being spotted, though.”
“In that case, why not try the trestle?” Rhee proposed. “Not much risk of being seen out here.”
“Is it even possible?” Linder asked, looking up at the tinker toy structure. “I don’t see any kind of walkway alongside the tracks. It’s just a flat platform all the way across.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Rhee corrected him. “If there’s no walkway, we can walk on the ties between the rails. We did it all the time when I was in college. The big question is whether we can get across before the next train comes. The trestle has two tracks, but I wouldn’t want to be on one of them when a train barrels past on the other.”
“God, I don’t know if I could do it,” Linder confessed, suddenly feeling weak at the knees. “The last trestle was just about all I could handle. One like this would have me crawling on hands and knees after the first couple steps. I’d never make it across.”
“So what’s worse? Facing up to an irrational fear of falling or getting hit by a speeding freight train?” Rhee challenged.
“If I look down between the ties, would I see rushing water beneath me?” Linder inquired hesitantly.
“Absolutely not. Think of it like any other bridge. It’s a solid platform all the way across, only with ties and rails laid on top,” Rhee assured him. “All you have to do is follow me, keep looking a couple steps ahead and say a mantra or something to keep you from thinking too much.”
“All right, I guess I have no other choice here,” Linder conceded, feeling the blood drain from his face and his cold hands sweat inside his gloves. “Can’t be any worse than being back at the mine, I suppose,” he added with a nervous laugh. “But let’s get a move on before I change my mind.”
They marched rapidly along the edge of the tree line toward the riverbank and hid near the bridge abutment to watch and listen for approaching trains. Seeing none, Rhee mounted the abutment and led the way across the first span. Though scarcely wider than a one-lane road, the flat wooden deck held two sets of railroad tracks laid side by side with a narrow margin to either side, bounded by a flimsy-looking wooden handrail. In places, the ties had rotted, and Linder blanched at the thought that these might be the original ties dating back to the railway’s construction some seventy years before.
Rhee advanced between the rails of the left-hand set of tracks, with Linder following close behind him, his eyes fixed on the rhythmic movement of Rhee’s boot heels. So long as his mind concentrated on those feet, Linder was able to contain his fear by shutting out all other thought. But after about fifty paces, he tripped on a tie and fell forward, crashing a knee heavily into the wood. Despite the pain, he rose quickly to his feet and limped forward, but by now Rhee’s boots were too distant to claim his full attention, and his body grew rigid from a rising sense of panic.
They were slightly past the midpoint of the bridge when Linder spotted the headlamp of a train approaching from the far side of the river and felt his heart stop.
“Looks like we have company,” Rhee called back over his shoulder without breaking stride. “Keep going as fast as you can but don’t run. As soon as we see which track it’s on, we’ll move to the other one. Lie face down on the outer shelf, hold on tight, and pray that nobody on the train sees us.”
In the orange-yellow glow of the setting sun, Linder saw that the train was approaching on the track to the right. Both men stepped onto the margin beyond the left set of rails, removed their backpacks, and lay perfectly flat while gripping the crossties with hands and feet. To Linder’s alarm, a clump of wood broke off in his hand and he found the ties above and below it just as rotten.
The moment the engine mounted the first span, Linder noticed a faint trembling beneath his feet. Now he felt the tremors intensify the closer the engine drew. His breathing quickened and his grip grew tighter by the second until the train was directly upon him. The instant the headlight moved past, he looked up and to his relief saw that the train consisted almost entirely of flatcars bearing heavy equipment. Thus the only witnesses aboard the train to report them would be the engine crew, and even they seemed unlikely to have noticed a couple of gray lumps in the glancing light of the engine’s halogen beams.
Once the final freight car went by, Linder felt his pulse rate slow and he made a conscious effort to relax his convulsive grip on the crossties beneath him. But when he raised his head and saw how close he was to the edge, he was overcome by a fresh bout of vertigo. So, instead of attempting to rise, he watched Rhee lift himself slowly onto hands and knees, pull his rucksack onto his shoulders, and climb unsteadily to his feet, holding the wooden handrail for safety.
And in that moment, Linder heard a dull crack of rotting wood giving way and watched Rhee teeter on the brink where the guardrail had apparently given way.
“Damn!” Rhee exclaimed as he reached for a crosstie and missed. Then the man pitched sidelong over the side and cartwheeled silently into the river below. He fell for what seemed like an eternity until at last his head struck a floatin
g slab of ice and his legs jackknifed awkwardly into the churning water. Linder watched for Rhee’s head to surface but it never did.
Now Linder’s limbs and spine went completely rigid with fear. He could not get up. Yet he knew that, if he did not leave the bridge, other trains were sure to follow. Only by extraordinary mental effort did he manage to calm his breathing and relax his muscles, put hands and feet under him, and crawl back onto the tracks. There, regaining his balance, he stood erect and set one foot stiffly before the other with his eyes fixed on the dark landmass ahead. As he passed Rhee’s abandoned backpack, he absently scooped it up, more from a base instinct to cover his trail than from any conscious thought for his dead comrade or the pack’s contents.
Once across the bridge, Linder scrambled down the embankment holding the extra pack to his chest and ran toward the tree line with all the strength and speed that surging adrenalin could deliver. He ran until he was out of breath and could run no more.
As he knelt on the damp forest floor under the dim light of the crescent moon, Linder shook with fear and rage from the effects of the stress hormones coursing through his body and pummeled the soft earth furiously with both fists. At that moment, he felt more alone than ever before, even more than during his solitary confinement. At the same time, he realized that he must guard against his natural tendency to withdraw into himself. To survive, he must focus on the present. What must I do right now, he asked himself again and again. But he had no answer. Instead, his thoughts traveled around in circles until at last he closed his eyes and found release in sleep.
S16
With lies, one can only move forward; there is no going back. Russian Proverb
MID-APRIL, WEDNESDAY, WEST OF EDMONTON, ALBERTA
Linder awoke with a start. Looking up, he could see from the moon’s position above the horizon that he could not have slept more than an hour or two. He rose, took a drink from his water bottle, and sorted through the contents of Rhee’s backpack, stuffing anything useable into his own, and returning the rest to Rhee’s. Then he walked back to the river, added a few rocks to the Korean’s pack and tossed it into the surging river.
Now would be the time, Linder realized, to honor Rhee’s death with a prayer or a moment of silent remembrance. But all he felt was confusion. What was the purpose of their being chainmates on the Canol Road, their falling out at Camp N-320, and their being thrown together again as fugitives if it only came to this? And what did it mean that he was now the last of the six fugitives left alive? Was it wrong for him to feel no survivor’s guilt upon Rhee’s death? And what was he to do with himself now that he was alone?
Linder watched Rhee’s pack bob and sink in the raging current and suddenly felt very small and insignificant. He did not know the answers to these questions and could not answer them on his own. He would require help.
“Okay, spirit guides, or God, or whoever you are” Linder said aloud, raising his eyes to the star-filled sky. “If you’re out there, how about giving me some guidance, the way you did for Scotty?” He felt the weight of his backpack on his shoulders and added, “I’ve got a couple hundred bucks and an I.D. that may or may not be any good and not a bite of food. Now, do I find a town and try to hole up for a while or do I catch the first train for the border? I could be caught by nightfall either way. So which will it be?”
Linder closed his eyes and waited for an answer. At that moment, an icy north wind gusting across the river struck him full in the face, reminding him of the terrible night the team had spent exposed on a mountainside above the Nahanni River before Scotty had discovered the ranger’s cabin. Then he remembered the final descent to that cabin, when, near exhaustion, he had seen a vision of Patricia Kendall with her daughter, somewhere in Utah. Now the image of Patricia’s face appeared to Linder again, and he remembered his promise to Roger Kendall and to Charlie Yost that, if he survived, he would go to Utah and do what he could to help her. If he were recaptured along the way, so be it. But he would not quit. And that, he realized, was the guidance he had sought.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Linder refilled his water bottle from the river, drank till his growling belly was full, and set off once again toward the rail line. An hour later, he caught sight of a small marshaling yard about a quarter of a mile from a brightly lit drilling camp.
Linder waited just outside the yard in the pre-dawn darkness and watched men with flashlights and lanterns signal the departure of a southbound train consisting of half a dozen boxcars and about two dozen flatcars. He waited until the men left the boxcars, and then tested the doors until he found one that would not close fully owing to a broken latch. He climbed in and rolled the door shut as far as it would go. After fifteen or twenty anxiety-filled minutes, the train lurched forward and rolled jerkily down the tracks before gaining speed and rolling south.
Three or four hours later Linder heard the engineer blow his air horn. Peering through the crack in the open door, Linder saw a series of commercial buildings along the tracks. The air horn blew again after ten minutes or so, and with increasing frequency as the train entered the suburbs of Edmonton and reduced its speed through numerous level crossings. Each time the train slowed, Linder’s heart raced, anxious that the train not stop and leave him stranded in the city. To his immense relief, the train passed through Edmonton without interruption and drove on toward Calgary. Linder used the time to sort through the contents of his backpack. His spirits soared on finding a crushed chocolate bar and a small bag of raw pine nuts among Rhee’s effects. He alternated between eating the nuts and the chocolate fragments, savoring them one at a time.
The air horn blew more frequently again as the train approached Calgary another three hours later. Once more, it snaked through the metro area and entered the final stretch toward the city of Lethbridge and the U.S. border. Two more hours elapsed, and Linder began to reconsider whether it would be such a good idea to cross the border aboard a freight train. After consulting his map, he decided to hop off at Lethbridge, just north of the U.S. border, and approach Montana on foot from the mountainous region to the east of Glacier National Park.
Before reaching Lethbridge, the train pulled onto a siding late in the afternoon at a Canadian Pacific rail yard where the north-south line crossed the CPR’s east-west trunk road. As soon as the car slowed sufficiently for Linder to jump off, he rolled open the door, sat on the edge, and leapt to the ground holding his backpack in front of him to break his fall. And fall he did, but not badly enough to hurt himself beyond a few scratches from the coarse gravel. Yet no sooner did he pick himself up than he spotted a team of railroad workers approaching the train from the rear of the yard, cutting off his retreat. One of them saw Linder and gave chase.
Detecting no other avenue of escape, Linder fled in the direction the train was moving, caught up with his old boxcar, and climbed back in. Though it took all his strength to open the door on the opposite side of the train, in time it gave way and Linder lowered himself once again to the gravel roadbed. Seeing no workers or yard bulls on this side of the train, he scuttled under a waiting tank car on the next track, then under a flatcar on the track beyond. Out of sight from his pursuers now, he ran in the opposite direction from the moving train and took cover behind some shrubbery to catch his breath.
Linder remained hidden until the sun went down, feeling like a hunted animal determined to evade capture. His mind desperately sought assurance that he would prevail, recalling various tight spots he had faced while working undercover, as well as Scotty’s prediction soon after they met that Linder would someday be free.
When darkness fell, he steeled his nerves to leave his hiding place, crept out of the rail yard and crossed the dimly lit tracks headed southwest toward the Montana border. Though desperately hungry, he rejected the idea of spending any of his Canadian dollars to buy food before entering the U.S. He did this not only out of concern for his untested identity documents, but also for fear that the Mounties might have been alerted to two
suspicious-looking men with backpacks along the rail line north of Edmonton. If so, they might have connected that sighting to his flight from the Lethbridge rail yard and pick up their search from the latter.
Accordingly, Linder suppressed his hunger pangs as he had done so many times before. He was so close to the border now that he imagined he could smell it in the air. Once over the border in the U.S., his Montana identity card would draw far less scrutiny than in Canada. After all, who would suspect a Montana resident of entering the state illegally? And he could spend his Canadian dollars with little worry because hard currency was in high demand on the American side.
Linder walked half the night through the hills, navigating by the stars and by the tiny compass that Scotty had given him at the camp infirmary. He slept without a campfire and rose to continue walking at daybreak the next day. About an hour into his hike on that second day since Rhee’s death, he observed a distant road that led southeast toward Glacier National Park.
That morning the weather was unseasonably mild and the air fragrant with blossoming lilacs, crabapples, and wildflowers. Unlike northern Alberta, where the bitter end of winter still reigned, Linder had walked into the warm embrace of spring, where birds sang, fields exchanged their coats of brown for green, and flowers displayed colors that made Linder’s spirit sing.
Before long, he found an overgrown trail where old ruts from all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes led south. Within another hour, he came upon a metal sign on a ten-foot post. The sign said “United States Boundary/Illegal to Enter U.S. on This Trail” with pictographs showing that ATVs, dogs, and firearms were prohibited. Further ahead was a sign with “Warning!” written in bold red letters, and the words “If you are entering the United States without presenting yourself to an Immigration Officer, you may be arrested and prosecuted for violating U.S. Immigrations and Customs Laws.” Similar notices were posted at varying intervals in both directions, spaced according to the contour of the land, so that a traveler could not help but see one regardless of where he might cross the border.
Exile Hunter Page 35
