by Jeff Carson
It had been an hour since the first rays of light rose over the eastern peaks, and Wolf could now see shimmering pinpoint reflections off windows and rooftops in town far below to the west.
There didn’t seem to be any action out of the ordinary in town, not that he could see much from such a distance, but he knew the man-hunt would be well underway by now.
Wolf sat up a little as he heard a faint rumble of a four-stroke engine. It sounded like a motorcycle — like his Yamaha, or an ATV. It grew louder below, and finally he could sense it was coming from the right.
He pointed the binoculars as a four-wheeler slowly came over the hill and stopped. Its engine at an idle was almost inaudible from the four hundred yard distance.
The image of Young on a parked ATV bounced gently in Wolf’s binoculars. The big guy was digging for something in a pack of some kind on his lap, looking down. Then he un-shouldered his rifle and pointed it towards the group of bushes where Wolf had ditched the motorcycle.
Wolf narrowed his eyes.
Young seemed to think better of taking the shot, and shouldered his rifle, then accelerated fast down the hill.
Wolf followed through the lenses.
A few seconds later the sound waves of the thumping engine hit — a long sustained acceleration that ended abruptly in scraping tires a couple seconds after Young had halted the four-wheeler.
Young jumped off and walked to the lone clump of foliage on an otherwise desolate looking high-mountain landscape.
There was no way he saw the bike from the top of the hill, or saw it at all now. Wolf had made sure of that the night before.
Wolf had ridden hard for over three hours, leaving scent decoys, doubling back on his trail numerous times, ultimately ending up in a place that was as nondescript as any.
He wasn’t anywhere near Gary’s 2Shoe ranch, miles away in fact, and he’d hidden the bike completely. Nonetheless, here was Young. And Young walked straight to it, bent down, and threw back the limbs Wolf had placed over it without a second of hesitation.
Soon it made sense. Young dug around for a few seconds, as if looking for something on the bike, or underneath it. When he stood up, he had something small and white in his hand. Then he pulled out something from his pocket and looked at them both, then walked to his four-wheeler and dug in the pack on the back of his seat.
He had retrieved a GPS tracking device.
Wolf began taking mental stock of all his gear that he took from his house last night, all the while keeping the big man in the bobbing view of his binoculars. Wolf was reasonably confident there was no way he would have another one of those devices on him. More likely Young had attached them to Wolf’s vehicles, keeping track of him all last night, and then getting an early start this morning.
Wolf swung the binoculars back to the crest of the hill where Young had come from. There was nobody else. Certainly not any cops. Wolf cursed himself for not bringing a rifle.
Young was obviously out for blood, and at this point he would be praised as a hero if he came back with Wolf’s head in a duffle bag. He was alone, so he could say it was self-defense if he killed Wolf. Or maybe there were strict shoot-to-kill orders for Wolf right now straight from Vickers, the acting Sheriff.
Wolf shivered. Not because he was still covered with a quarter inch of overnight frost, but at the thought that Gary Connell had murdered his only son. Why? To create this chance to kill Wolf?
Or had he? Maybe this Young guy was working alone with his own agenda. If so, why?
Wolf swept the binoculars back downhill.
His stomach lurched as the distant image filled his view. Young was standing dead still, pointing his rifle straight at him.
Wolf held his breath and didn’t blink. Every muscle on his body tensed, ready to duck at the first sign of a muzzle flash, knowing that bullet would reach him a lot faster than the sound of the shot.
After a few agonizing moments, Young slowly swung his rifle to the shadowed slope to Wolf’s right, then back and forth a few times.
Wolf stayed still, taking slow breaths into the neck of his coat, hoping his breath was invisible at such a distance.
With a lightning quick movement, Young put the rifle on his shoulder, then crouched down, feeling the ground with his hand.
In just a few seconds, Young found Wolf’s tracks and followed them.
Wolf relaxed as Young walked the opposite direction, following the misdirection Wolf had laid down. His tracks went on for hundreds of yards in the opposite direction where they would end on a flat granite formation in the distance. Even then, Wolf had continued for another hundred yards, leaving telltale scrapes in lichen and overturned pebbles before doubling back and finally resting in the spot he was at now.
After twenty yards, Young stood straight, turned around, and marched back towards his four-wheeler, and then fired it up.
Wolf watched for twenty minutes as Young crept up the open expanse, following Wolf’s tracks, leaning off the edge of his seat.
At the summit of the gentle rise, Young paused, scanning in front of him, then disappeared over the hill. The droning engine faded to nothing a few seconds later.
Wolf pulled out his cell phone. It had no service, and the battery was almost dead. He pulled out his Leatherman multi-tool and wrenched off the SIM cardholder, and removed the card.
He pressed the power button, then, with a sharp breath, remembered the audio recording from last night he’d attempted, and switched the phone back on.
Dammit. The drug hangover slowed his mind, and was beginning to get on his nerves.
He opened the voice memo application and looked at the latest file. It was thirty-seven minutes long, dated the night before. He pushed play.
Wolf stretched his legs, scanned the horizon where Young had just gone, and listened.
“Gotcha.” It was the whisper in his ear. On his ear. It seemed a lot louder on the recording than he remembered. It was more of a loud declaration by Young than the whisper Wolf remembered. Then there was a full five minutes of shuffling, scraping, grunting, and inaudible noises from Young.
Then five blasts.
And a lot of laughing.
Wolf narrowed his eyes and looked at the phone. There were another few minutes of shuffling, all the while with the same incessant laughing. Wolf turned up the volume as loud as it would get.
Young’s voice was muffled and sounded distant. “Oh you’re fucking dead now. You’re dead now. You’re dead now.” Then there was a long pause. “Die…you dead?” Young said.
Wolf squinted and put the speaker to his ear.
It sounded like Young was inhaling and exhaling rapidly, like he was hyperventilating. Then there was a maniacal, high-pitched laugh that rose in pitch, as if each giggle was a question.
Wolf looked at the phone and another chill swept his spine.
The guy was a nut job. He’d seen men in the Army who seemed to enjoy killing too much. But this was taking it to a whole new level.
Maybe he was acting alone.
Wolf put the speaker back to his ear. There was dead silence.
He pressed his finger on the forward button, stopping at a sound. He reversed and played it.
It sounded like Young making a phone call, with a lot of back and forth talking, in a calm manner.
The call ended, and there were several minutes of silence again.
Wolf pressed his finger on the forward button, waiting for another sign of sounds.
He stopped and reversed again near the end. It was Young trying to wake him up, throwing water and smacking him.
“Hi, I just heard shots fired at Derek Connell’s place. There were a lot of them, please come quick…Wake up, you’ve only got a few minutes.”
Then there was the sound of Wolf missing two calls, him slowly snapping out of his unconscious state, and his drunken words with Rachette.
Wolf stopped the recording, shut off the phone completely, and took a deep breath.
There w
as no reason Young had to let Wolf go, to warn him the cops were coming, unless Young wanted him to run — to be in the situation he found himself in now.
And right now? Wolf was a dangerous man who had just shot the Sheriff five times, and then fled into the woods. He was a hunted man.
Shoot to kill. Wolf knew with a sinking feeling that those would be the orders.
Wolf stood up on legs that ached from a long night’s ride, chock full of uncirculated lactic acid from sitting still for hours on end in the freezing temperatures.
He looked again to the horizon and listened to chirps of marmots scurrying above him, squinted into the warmth of the rising sun, found the rocky formation he was looking for, took two quick breaths, and began jogging.
Chapter 28
Young drove slowly over the gentle rise, and then accelerated hard downhill for fifty yards. He slammed the brakes, skidding the ATV to a ninety-degree stop, and killed the engine at the same time. Before it came to rest, he jumped off on the downhill side and landed with his feet already moving at superhuman speed the instant they touched the ground.
Young sprinted downhill, reaching the tree line, then hopped a fallen tree at breakneck speed, landed on the knife-edge of a boulder, stepped onto a flat rock, and jumped.
Thirty feet later he landed on a steep dirt chute in a feet-first baseball slide. Just before careening into a car-sized rock, he dug in his boots and jumped, hand-slap-vaulting over it with ease. He ran to his left and jumped onto a steep scree pile.
The wind rushed through his closely cropped hair as he took giant, bouncing strides straight down the loose rock. He gained even more speed, covering huge distances with each step, until, he turned at just the right moment, executing a long hockey stop.
In a fluid move, he stepped onto the narrow dirt trail, and looked up with a lazy expression. He’d covered the five hundred vertical feet in seconds. Maybe he’d take up extreme skiing this next winter.
He squinted and saw the gleam of the red four-wheeler on the slope above. If someone saw it, they saw it. It didn’t matter. He’d left no trace of himself on it. He never did.
He began jogging. A medium pace would be sufficiently fast.
His lips curled into a small smile as he thought about Wolf, sitting on the side of the hill, then he frowned. Wolf’s mistake was almost disappointing. But the whole interaction had made it interesting at least.
Does he see me? Is he gonna shoot?
He allowed a small laugh, then blanked his face and upped the pace just a little.
Chapter 29
Wolf pushed hard up the side of the mountain, cursing the cigarettes he’d allowed himself the last two weeks as a searing pain developed in the center of his lungs. His legs weren’t in the kind of shape he would have liked either — his calves were knots, his thighs sluggish, and a strain had opened up in his right groin. His mind, however, pushed him forward without mercy.
He didn’t know if he was being paranoid or not, but the more Wolf had thought about Young, staring at him through the rifle scope, the faster Wolf had run, until finally Wolf had been in an all out sprint for ten minutes — fighting for the high ground he scaled towards now.
When he reached the top of the rise, he stopped, keeping a rock outcropping to the west, towards the way he’d just come from. He huffed through his teeth for a minute, then finally closed his mouth, fighting the coughing reflex the best he could. Damn cigarettes.
Wolf’s thumping heart was loud in his ears as he leaned against the rock and peered over the side.
Not thirty seconds later he heard a noise.
Young came into view from behind a rock outcropping far below and to the left. His feet pounded on the dusty trail in a fast perfect rhythm. His huge strides propelled his body forward with the ferocity of a charging grizzly bear. His face, however, was dead calm, as if watching a boring TV show.
He covered fifty yards with the speed of an NFL wide receiver, then slowed to a dead stop just below Wolf with an agility that didn’t seem natural for such a large man.
He looked up the slope opposite Wolf and pumped his lungs with big heaves of his chest. After a full minute of standing still and catching his breath, he turned in a slow circle. Listening.
Wolf’s lungs itched and rattled, demanding he expel the cigarette tar with a violent cough. He smothered his face in his sleeve and breathed slow.
Young did a full circle and then looked down. He was scanning the dusty trail for prints.
Wolf had crossed the trail no more than fifty feet beyond where Young was. If it came down to it and Young came up after him, Wolf would be able to sit tight and pick him off from his higher ground. Of course, Young would know that. Picking Young off now would take out any uncertainty, but he was too far to hit with his Glock.
Finally, it looked like Young came to a decision, snapping his head up the slope to the west.
Wolf watched Young climb with ease, gaining altitude fast, all the while following parallel with Wolf’s telltale tracks that gouged into the steep slope fifty or so feet to the right.
But thankfully Young kept meandering his way to the left, and finally climbed out of view, undoubtedly to go ambush Wolf where he had sat fifteen minutes ago.
Wolf inhaled and muffled a hard cough into his sleeve, clearing his lungs in one push. There was no telling how long it would take Young to realize Wolf was gone, and then to figure out just where to. Wolf was counting on Young thinking he went north and west, towards the two peaks — towards the backside of Connell’s ranch.
If Young was an experienced tracker, however, he may see what little ground sign Wolf had left, leading him back down the way he’d came, and hot on Wolf’s trail to the east.
He’d bought some time. But how much?
He glared to the northeast at the small dark brown cone of rock. It was miles away on the other side of the vast forested valley floor. The journey would provide good cover, the prize at the end hopefully being help. Maybe even a rifle.
But it had been a long time. Would the old guy recognize him? Was he even alive? Would he shoot Wolf?
There wasn’t a better option.
He tightened his backpack straps, peered over the rocks, took a deep breath and ran down the hill.
Chapter 30
Rachette crunched his way over the dried pine needles, and stepped over a log, scratching his ankle on a jagged branch jutting from it. “Shit.”
Vickers stopped, shooting him a glare over his shoulder. He’d been watching Rachette like a hawk since they left Wolf’s property at first light. Vickers was obviously certain Rachette was going to be in touch with Wolf at some point, and Vickers was determined to catch him in the act.
It was getting old.
“Not talking to Wolf.” Rachette raised his hands.
Vickers stared at him a beat, then turned around and kept walking.
After a few minutes, a deputy led by a hulking German Shepherd came scrambling into view straight ahead of them. “It’s another scent decoy.” The K-9 unit deputy from Summit County held up a dirty sock stuffed with rocks towards Vickers.
Rachette looked on with a poker face.
“Shit. This is getting ridiculous. Do we even have a general direction he went?” Vickers took off his cowboy hat, wiped his forehead and looked into the distance.
They had been following the dogs north, which had been following Wolf’s scent for the last hour. Before that, they were headed southeast for an hour and a half. The net effect of their location was somewhere straight east of Wolf’s ranch, on the sun-baked side of a thinly treed mountain.
It was hot, Rachette’s body was aching, and he was desperate for sleep. Then Rachette thought of Wolf. With the misdirection the search teams were encountering, he doubted Wolf had had any sleep the night before.
Rachette pulled his phone from his pocket and gave it a quick look again. There was no sign of a message from Wolf.
Vickers saw him do it, and Rachette didn’t care.
The helicopter thumped over the ridge into view again, drowning out any sounds.
Vickers watched the helicopter leave and fade into the distance as he walked over. He took off his backpack and set it on the ground, took a sip of his water, and held it out to Rachette.
Rachette shook his head.
“What do you think?” Vickers wafted his shirt. The smell of cologne and sweat billowed out in an invisible noxious cloud.
“What do you mean?”
Vickers eyed Rachette. “You know Wolf. Tell me what the hell you are thinking.” He looked him in the eye. “You keep checking that phone. Come on. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Rachette glared back suspiciously. It was the first time Vickers had given him a sincere look in the eye since they had met. Like they were suddenly equals. “I think he didn’t do any of this.”
Vickers gave a high-pitched laugh, closing his eyes to the sky, then returned to his sincere self. “Come on. Seriously?”
Rachette narrowed his eyes.
Vickers held his hands up. “Okay, fine. But you’ve gotta convince me, here. You think your man didn’t do this? Why? Tell me.”
Rachette looked down the slope at the men walking further away, then up the hill. No one was near.
“Who the hell are you?”
Vickers blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You heard me. You come waltzing in here, and take Wolf’s position while Connell takes Sheriff? What the hell is that?”
“I was hired by Sluice County, just like you.”
Rachette shook his head and gave a laugh of his own. “Nah. Not just like me. You had a straight line into the Sheriff’s Department through the Connells. I came in here and interviewed for the job with the Sheriff, just like everyone else in this department. I never saw you set foot in the station until the day you started. How’d you pull that off?”
Vickers glared. “I was recruited by Mr. Connell, hired by the County Council. His voice turned icy. “And that’s that.”
