by Ken Goddard
Hateley, Caldreaux, Kingman and Achara all looked at each other and shrugged agreeably.
“And because the snow storm shows every sign of continuing, and possibly getting worse, maintaining visual contact with all of you — even with the night scopes and infrared filtered flashlights — is going to be a bit iffy at times. So we’re going to modify the rules a bit more and issue the four hunters and Gunny Sergeant Bulattus with short-range walkie-talkies. The functional range is roughly a mile with line-of-sight. But you’re not likely to be in sight of each other, with all the rocks and outcroppings; so plan on climbing to high ground — to a point where you can see the yellow flasher of our sniper post — if you need to make an emergency call and want to be absolutely certain that we’ll hear you.”
Lanyard reached into his kit bag and handed out five of the walkie-talkies, each tape-marked with a user’s call-sign. “They’re all set to channel one, and your call-signs are your cave positions: CAVE-ONE, CAVE-TWO, CAVE-THREE and CAVE-FOUR. Gunny Sergeant Bulattus will be SARGE-ONE.”
“What about your call sign?” Hateley asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” Lanyard advised. “If you need help, just get on the horn and whichever one of us is within range will respond; which will certainly include Gunny Sergeant Bulattus if he’s closer and more readily available. That okay with you, Sarge?”
“Roger that,” Bulatt said.
“Well, in that case,” Lanyard said, “I think we’d better finish loading up the chopper and get moving out to the base camp before the storm up there gets any worse. We’ll have a few hours of daylight to make a last-minute equipment check, practice with the radios and night-vision gear, and then get you all settled into your camp sites before its time for the fun to start.”
Part IV: Chimera
CHAPTER 37
Base Camp, the Maze
Dressed in winter white-cammo-shell tunic and pants that were identical to those worn by Gedimin Bulatt and Achara Kulawnit, Marcus Wallis remained in the snow-covered trees about fifty yards from the base camp and watched — with a pair of adjustable 4x binoculars — as the modified Blackhawk helicopter landed at the make-shift helipad.
Moments later, the four familiar figures of Quince Lanyard, Michael Hateley, Max Kingman and Stuart Caldreaux climbed down out of the Blackhawk’s main cabin door, immediately followed by the unfamiliar figures of Gedimin Bulatt and Achara Kulawnit.
As Wallis continued to watch, Lanyard led his five charges down a pathway from the base camp’s heliport and sniper post to the mouth of a deep natural cavern that Wallis had selected as a place to train their clients in the use of night vision goggles. He watched the group disappear into the mouth of the cavern, waited two more minutes, and then worked his way up to the sniper post.
There, he found Jack Gavin sitting on a trunk-like green aluminum rifle case underneath a tied and staked-down tarp shelter.
Gavin was working on the cabling connections between a laptop computer and a large digital telescopic sight mounted on the receiver of a thick-barreled stainless-steel rifle. The rifle was clamped solidly onto a slot within a heavy platform mount, in turn, was bolted to an electronically adjustable x-y-z servo-box. The thick legs of the tripod bolted to the underside of the servo-box were held solidly in place with a combination of sandbags and heavy rocks. A second set of cables ran from the servo-box and the platform mount to the laptop; and a third set ran from out from the laptop in opposite directions, connecting to a pair of pole-mounted directional transceiver antennas mounted one hundred feet apart.
In effect, the software program on the laptop controlled the three-dimensional aim-point of the heavy-barreled rifle; or, at least, that was the theory.
“Got it working yet?” Wallis asked.
“Not bloody likely,” Gavin muttered. “We need to get Quince back on the job. He built the bugger; he should know how to fix it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“He thinks it’s one of the connecting cables; a real pisser, seeing as how all the complicated bits seem to be working spot-on.”
“Show me what’s working,” Wallis said.
“I’ll start with the signal-tracking mode.” Gavin hit an Alt-F key and the laptop screen instantly shifted to a graphic overhead image of the Maze with a pulsing point in the lower left corner. Gavin then zoomed-in on the lower left corner, and they both watched the pulsing point separated out into eight distinct points; six of them clumped together at a section of the graphic marked helipad.
“Those were the positions of all eight walkie-talkies ten minutes ago,” Gavin said, pointing at the screen. “That’s Quince and our five clients coming off the chopper, me right here, and you out in the woods.”
As Wallis watched, six of the pulsing points — labeled on the screen in bright gold letters as ‘G2’, ‘CA’, ‘HA’, ‘KI’, ‘FO’ and ‘BU’ — moved as a group to a section of the graphic labeled ‘TEST CAVE ENTRANCE’ and then disappeared, one by one. The point labeled ‘G1’ slowly approached the point labeled ‘G3’ which remained motionless.
“That’s us, now, in real time,” Gavin said as he hit another Alt-F key. “As you can see, the signal-tracking part of the program is dead-on. We’ll lose a signal for a moment, every now and then, when a big rock gets in the way. But we’ve got a lot of relay sensors out there, and the computer always maintains the ‘last-known’ position. Given all that, we’re not going to have any trouble keeping track of the players in this little game.”
“So where’s the problem?” Wallis asked.
“In the auto-targeting mode, probably the feed-back system,” Gavin said. “Or, at least, that’s what Quince thinks. The system will track a signal just fine. When you were other there near Cave Three, an hour ago, I clicked on your radio icon, and the scope locked onto your signal like a bloody SAM; held your last-known-position every time you disappeared behind a rock, locked right back on you the instant you re-appeared, and then disengaged — for manual tracking by the computer and joystick — when I gave it the signal without a hitch. It was only when I actually tried to manually aim and dry-fire the bugger at a nearby target that I got the hiccup.”
“Meaning?”
“When I hit the fire button, the bloody computer re-engaged into the auto-tracking mode all by itself, moved the cross-hairs back onto the G1 icon, and then fired the round.”
“What?!”
“Damn near crapped me drawers, I did,” Gavin said. “Good thing the chamber on that one-oh-seven was empty, or we’d have been out a perfectly good walkie-talkie.”
“Not to mention the jacket I had it in,” Wallis said. “Tell Quince he’d bloody well better fix that glitch, or he’s going to be walking post out there by himself.” Wallis was silent for a few moments. “Do you think he can re-program the computer so that it never fires directly at the radio signal, no matter what instructions we give it; basically, create a fail-safe system?”
“Beats me, but I’ll ask,” Gavin said. “We’re probably pushing things a bit, trying to jury-rig a complicated system like this at the last minute; but you know Quince — man’s a bloody genius with his electronic toys. I’ll wager he’ll come up with something that works.”
“He’d better,” Wallis said. “The idea is to track and cover our clients if one of those mother elephant’s starts giving them a bad time; not blow them into shreds with a bloody fifty.”
“He mentioned he was going to pick up a set of replacement cables in town,” Gavin said. “If the wiring really is the problem, we should be good-to-go well before dark. If not, I can always disconnect the weapon and go manual. I’m not going to be able to lead the target, look out ahead for rocks, and calculate all those distance, windage and drop numbers out to a thousand yards in my head as fast as this computer can — especially in this bloody weather — but I’m not going to start popping off rounds at our clients either.”
“In clear weather, I’d trust your eye over a bloody computer anytime,
lad,” Wallis said, clapping Gavin on the shoulder as he stared out into the swirling snow storm. “But, seeing as how Quince and I are going to be wandering around out in that muck, trying to keep everything in order, I’d just as soon not have the odd stray round whistling over our heads. Tell Quince to get this bugger fixed if he can. We’re not likely to need it; but eight-million-dollar payoffs don’t come around every day, and I don’t want to have a paying customer get stomped flat before we see the green.”
“Will do.”
“So what do we know about Fogarty’s last-minute substitution?”
“Not much; only what Quince relayed to me from the airport,” Gavin said. “The Asian lass basically confirmed what Fogarty told Hateley: that she’s his adopted daughter; that she likes to hunt with a bow and arrows she makes herself; and that she insisted on taking over for her father when he got hurt. The tough-looking bloke’s her U.S. Marine boyfriend; claims to be a Master Gunny. Quince says he fits the part — quiet, confident, no bragging, no bullshit — and showed up with all the proper gear. Odd thing is, though: he says he’s not interested in hunting; just going along for the ride, and to watch out for his Sheila.”
“Really?” Wallis cocked his head curiously. “What about confirmations?”
“Quince was getting on that when this bloody robot started getting the shakes,” Gavin said. “I could try to do a little digging myself, but — ”
“That’s all right, lad,” Wallis said, patting Gavin on the shoulder again. “We’ll leave that sort of thing to Quince when he’s got a spare moment. Long as we get paid, I don’t care who does the hunting. And besides,” he added, looking up at the sky, “I don’t think the weather’s going to get any better in the next few hours, so I’d better get back out there and get those last flashers in place while I can still find the bloody rocks.”
CHAPTER 38
Hovering over the Maze, Cascade Mountain Range, Washington.
At four o’clock that afternoon, looking out from the cargo bay windows of the hovering Blackhawk helicopter, the huge granite bowl sprawled out below looked very much as its name implied: a large and complicated maze of tall rocks and trees interspersed with small natural clearings, all of which were covered with a layer of white snow that was now falling from the darkening sky in large clumps.
From their aerial position five hundred feet over the base camp, Bulatt, Achara, Hateley, Kingman and Caldreaux could see four sets of flashing blue lights and four sets of greens, all of which was surrounded by an irregular array of flashing red lights.
“The blue flashers show the position of the caves, the green ones mark the bait piles, and the reds give the pilots positions of high-rising rocks near the landing zones,” Lanyard said, speaking into his helmet mike. “Marcus and Jack have spent the last couple of days setting them in place, and it looks like they’ve just about finished the job. The batteries should be good for at least forty hours of continuous operation in this weather, and we can turn them on or off — or switch them from visible to IR light — remotely from the chopper, so they should last us for the duration. Just another safety system we set in place to make sure we can get to you in a hurry if the need arises. Wouldn’t want you lads — and the lass, of course — to think we’re skimping on the life rings.”
Lanyard looked around at his five passengers, all of whom were staring out the windows at the scene below as they listened to his spiel through their helmet earphones.
“I’m sure you’ve all noticed that the storm is getting worse, as we thought it might; so we’ll probably shut down helicopter operations as soon as we’ve dropped all of you off at your landing zones. Not to worry, though, because Marcus, Jack and I will be out and about, keeping an eye on things. And if an emergency situation should arrive, we can always get this chopper back up in the air and to your location, using the flashers as beacons. She’s a sturdy craft — designed for search and rescue operations — and perfectly capable of flying in much worse weather; especially with the talented lads we’ve got up front at the controls. We’re going to start dropping you off at your cave positions, and give you time to get settled in before the evening festivities begin; starting with the farthest position out, which means Carolyn and Ged. Everybody good to go?”
Four helmeted figures either gestured or nodded ‘yes.’
“All right, gentlemen… and lady,” Lanyard said, as he gave the ‘go-ahead’ signal to the pilots, “your ‘hunt of an era’ has now officially begun.”
Drop Zone, Cave 2, the Maze.
The snow was coming down steadily as the pilots set the modified Blackhawk down on the roughly flat landing zone that — as best Bulatt could tell — was about eighty yards from the blue-flashing cave site, and a good hundred and fifty from the green-flashing bait pile.
At Quince’s signal, Bulatt and Achara hopped out of the cargo bay door, took their equipment and supply bags from Quince and the co-pilot, and then stepped back out of the range of the whirling rotors as the Blackhawk rose back up in the air and then disappeared in the drifting snow swirls and darkening sky.
Moments later, the distinctive whop-whop noise of the rapidly disappearing Blackhawk was lost in the more subtle whistling and creaking sounds of the wind sweeping through the surrounding trees.
From Bulatt’s perspective, the snow-flakes seemed to be bigger and falling faster now.
“I think we’d better get this gear up to the cave and get a fire started before it gets too dark to search for wood,” he said, looking down at the collection of packs, duffle bags and equipment cases. “Think we can make it in two trips?”
“We can certainly try,” Achara said.
Working quickly, they secured the two sleeping bags onto the tops of the hiking packs; strapped Achara’s bow and quiver to her pack, and a white-nylon assault vest loaded with extra magazines for the M14 onto Bulatt’s; and tied pairs of Achara’s spears onto the sides of the two smaller kit bags. Then, after slipping the heavy packs over their shoulders and pulling the waist-support straps snug, Achara picked up one of the small kit bags in each hand while Bulatt picked up one of the heavy duffel bags in his left hand and the M14 rifle case in his right.
Walking slowly and carefully over the unfamiliar ground that was covered with at least a foot of snow, Bulatt and Achara worked their way up the gradual slope to what turned out to be a cave entrance — about five feet high and three feet across — that was partially concealed by the trunk and lower branches of a thirty-foot pine tree.
“Looks cozy,” Achara commented as they stopped about fifteen feet from the cave entrance and looked around.
“And recently visited, too,” Bulatt added. In spite of the foot-thick-covering of snow, it was obvious that someone — or something — had been in and out of the cave in the past hour or so. “I think I’d better check it out first.”
Reaching into his pack, Bulatt pulled out a four-cell flashlight, turned it on, drew the. 44-Magnum revolver from under his tunic, and then cautiously stepped forward to the cave entrance. Once there, he knelt down, aimed the flashlight beam into the cave, cursed, and then scrambled inside.
Moments later, Achara entered the cave cautiously with her own flashlight, and saw Bulatt kneeling down at the far end of the irregularly-shaped grotto that looked like it had been enlarged from its original shape with dynamite, spikes and a sledgehammer many years earlier. The resulting cavern ranged from six feet wide at the entrance to twelve at the back, and was approximately twenty feet deep with an irregularly-jagged ceiling that rose from six to ten feet from the more-or-less smooth and upward sloping granite and dirt floor.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as she came up to Bulatt’s left side, and then saw the carnage for herself.
“Looks like we’ve had a visitor,” Bulatt said, motioning with his flashlight beam at the torn-apart boxes that — according to the block-printed labels — had contained and assortment of freeze-dried meals, juice, coffee, medical supplies, batteries, blankets
and cooking gear.
“A bear?”
“Certainly looks like it,” Bulatt said. “A lot of the food packs are torn apart, and the non-edible stuff’s scattered all over the cave.”
“You think he’s still around?”
“I doubt it, but we’d better get our gear inside, just in case.”
Working cautiously now, Bulatt and Achara quickly moved the packs and bags inside the cave. Then, after loading the M14 rifle with a heavy 20-round magazine, and making sure that Achara was familiar with its operation, Bulatt worked his way back down to the drop zone that was becoming increasingly more difficult to see in the rapidly falling snow.
It took him three trips to transport the rest of their equipment and supply bags up to the cave; the extra trips necessitated by the. 44 Magnum Smith amp; Wesson that had become a comforting presence in his gloved right hand.
By the time he managed to shove the last of the bags into the cave mouth, and then work himself inside, Bulatt discovered that Achara had been busy.
The cave that had looked exactly like the site of a bear ransacking when he’d left was now neatly organized. A pair of propane-fueled lamps dangled overhead from knotted lines wedged into cracks in the jagged ceiling rock surface; sacks of packaged food and juice — mostly the supplies they’d brought with them — were hung on similar cords from the highest wall points in the rear of the cave. Equipment bags containing their extra sets of clothes, and two boxes containing their remaining stock of canned food — with their extra blankets stacked on top — formed a three-foot high barrier partially dividing the cave into front and back halves, in addition to providing a pair of comfortable seats. The cooking gear and backpacks were stacked along the wall near the entrance, and a bed area had been made out of insulating layers of torn cardboard and pine tree boughs spread out beneath their inflatable mattresses and rolled-out sleeping bags. A visibly bent and dented propane stove had been set up against the wall on the cave-entrance side of the barrier, and was busily heating a tea-pot and a skillet — its inner surfaces glistening with cooking oil. The loaded M14 rifle; the assault vest with the extra loaded magazines; four boxes of 7.62mm rifle and two of. 44-Magnum pistol ammo; and the spears, the bow and quiver of arrows were all stacked against the back wall next to the two night-vision goggle cases and within easy reach of the bed.
