Deonovich turned and saw Lynn and then grimaced. He started to turn away but stopped and then looked back at her.
“You slept out by the fire last night, am I correct?”
“Yes, I figured the tent was a little restrictive for a prisoner.”
“Being a smart-ass American is not as endearing as you would believe. If we did not need you, I would throw your very mutilated body into the river.”
Lynn didn’t respond to the angry glare and threat as much as she wanted to.
“We are missing a man. Did you see anything out of the ordinary last night?” he asked.
“You mean outside of a bunch of Russian commandos out camping in the Canadian wilderness? No, not at all.”
Deonovich raised his large hand to strike Lynn and actually managed to start it forward, when a shout stayed his punishment once again. Sagli was walking up, using a leather string to tie his hair back.
“Join the men in the search.” He stared at Deonovich until the large man moved angrily away.
“Ms. Simpson, we have not only lost a man, but also the signal from our metal detectors from across the river. Do you have any idea how this could be?”
“Some of your men don’t look to be the brightest, so—” Lynn started but stopped. She could see in the dark eyes of Sagli that he wouldn’t brook another of her insults. “No, I don’t.”
Suddenly, several of the remaining twenty-five men started shouting from the edge of the river. Sagli turned and quickly left. Lynn, for her part, slowly followed as if only casually interested.
When they arrived, the men had calmed down. Sagli, expecting the worse—a drowned soldier—saw what they had been shouting about and the curious look on his face told Lynn that what he was seeing was something he had not expected. Lined along the rippling shoreline of the fast-moving Stikine, were arrayed four of the small round devices she had seen the large soldier shoot across the river the day before. From the look of them, they were still operating as lights flashed on and off. She saw Sagli look around and then down again at the metal detectors. Then he turned to the small technician who quickly leaned down and retrieved one on the small objects.
“Well, do you still have a pinpoint location to start the search? We no longer need these, am I correct?”
The small bespectacled man looked up. “Yes, sir, we triangulated a starting point last night from the devices. The radia—”
Sagli waved the man into sudden silence before he could complete his answer. He looked around him at the other soldiers who had started to wander away, continuing their search for the missing guard. Satisfied they hadn’t heard anything, he looked at Lynn, but she had been smart enough to turn her back on the conversation soon after hearing the technician’s slipup.
“Good, now how did these get over on this side of the river?” he asked, looking from the technician to once more eye Lynn. “It doesn’t matter. You men”—he shouted out—“prepare the camp; we are moving across the river.”
The men started splitting up as Lynn watched them move away. Deonovich waited and then waved Sagli over to the where he was standing with one foot in the river. Lynn stood her ground and watched, and they didn’t seem to care that she was there. Sagli stood in front of his partner, and then looked down when Deonovich indicated something down upon the riverbank. The ponytailed Sagli bent to one knee and then reached and felt the wet soil. Then he stood and gestured for Lynn to come over.
“Tell me, have you ever seen anything like this before? Being American, you watch far more television than I or my friend here.”
Lynn looked at him curiously, and then lowered her eyes to a spot indicated by the wet boot of Deonovich. Her eyes widened in pretend shock at seeing what she was looking at.
“No, I must say I haven’t.”
It was only half there, as the missing part disappeared into the clear waters of the Stikine, but she could clearly see the large toes and instep of the creature that had made the same prints inside the tree line. Like the one she had examined a few minutes before, this print dwarfed the boot of the giant Deonovich as he stood beside it. Sagli quickly reached out and scraped his own smaller boot across it, destroying the evidence. The other prints farther up the shoreline hadn’t been as defined as they were laid into the larger stones that made up the riverbank.
“Look around and make sure that there no more of these about; check the sandier soil, these rocks would hide anything distinctive,” he said to Deonovich. He then turned to Lynn. “You will remain quiet about this discovery, or I will be forced to deal with you.”
Lynn didn’t respond, she only looked at the disturbed sand where the print had once been. As Sagli started to walk away, she caught up with him.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I may not be your only problem. It seems like there may be something out there you didn’t account for on this little safari. I think they call whatever is stalking us a Sasquatch, or that little funny name most people laugh at, Bigfoot. Maybe you should have listened and accounted for some of the stories about this area.”
Sagli stopped and smiled at Lynn.
“We have accounted for everything, Ms. Simpson—everything.”
9
Mendenhall slowly made his way back to the rear of the Zodiac, stepping easily past Captain Everett as he slowed the large boat down and threw the engine into idle to ease to silence their approach around a blind corner as they entered into another bend in the Stikine. Will squeezed in beside the food packs and eyed Jack.
“Colonel, how long have you known the Canadian?” he asked, looking away when Collins looked over at him.
“Punchy and I trained together once upon a time in the UK. He was with MI-5 at the time and I was assisting our DELTA teams. We were their garnering some training from the British SAS. Old Punchy never was much of a field man,” Jack said as his eyes went from Will to the large form of Alexander sitting in the bow with Henri, who seemed to have developed a strange attachment to the Canadian, because of late he hadn’t been ten feet away from him. “He and Doc Ellenshaw have that in common—they don’t like bugs or things that go bump in the night. But he is the best intelligence officer I have ever run across”—he again looked at the black lieutenant—“with the exception of my baby sister. His main thing is computer espionage. He can break into most intelligence agencies and steal whatever he wants.”
“Anything else, Colonel? I mean I’ve seen it before, like with Captain Everett: There’s a closeness with people who have lived and almost died together. You and Alexander have that.”
Collins eyed his young lieutenant and was proud of the way Will had progressed; he was starting to develop the leadership skills that he knew he had all along. What’s more, Mendenhall was becoming an observer of human nature.
“In 1989, Punchy and I were dispatched on a recon mission just north of Vancouver to recover something of importance, that’s how we met. There’s nothing more than that.”
“You’re proud of what she’s achieved, huh, Colonel?” Will asked, taking the colonel by surprise.
Mendenhall knew he was treading dangerous ground with the man he had known for three years now. Jack Collins was probably the most secretive person he had ever known—his private life was off limits.
Jack smiled as he thought about Will’s question. “Yes, I am proud of Lynn. Oh, we’ve had our differences: She’s a crusader, one that will bash her head against the wall to do the right thing.”
“Sounds like someone we know, doesn’t it, Lieutenant?” Carl Everett said from his place behind the wheel of the boat as he placed the throttle of the motor to almost full speed as they came to a straight stretch of river.
Mendenhall didn’t say yes or no; he did however smile when he saw the look on Jack’s face—a look that said he didn’t know what Everett was talking about.
“Slow the boat, we have something in the water up here,” Punchy called out as he and Henri traded places in the bow.
Carl eased the th
rottles back as Punchy Alexander looked at the Frenchman and told him to hold his belt as he leaned far over the side of the rubber craft. He yanked and pulled at something in the water until he finally lifted a body halfway out.
“Goodness,” Professor Ellenshaw said, laying his notebook down and frowning.
The man was pale white, but they could see from the facial features that he hadn’t been in the water that long. The head was twisted almost backward and looked as if his jaw and both cheek bones were smashed.
“Damn, his body is all busted up,” Punchy called back.
“Check his arm,” Jack ordered from behind Farbeaux and Alexander.
Henri reached out and ripped the sleeve away from the shoulder. There was no tattoo.
“Okay, so we now know all of the mercs aren’t Spetsnaz,” Collins said. “Let him go, Henri, we don’t have time for any burials.”
Alexander and Farbeaux let the body go and allowed the river to take him. Ellenshaw leaned over and watched the body slide by.
“I think I would have liked to determine the cause of death, Colonel,” Charlie said as he watched until the river swallowed the young Russian soldier, not knowing if he really wanted to examine it or not, but feeling he should at least say he wanted to.
“I believe you could say his neck was broken, his back snapped in more than one place, and his face crushed, Doctor,” Farbeaux said as he reached over and washed his hands in the Stikine.
“Poor man,” Charlie said as he leaned back into the boat.
“Just remember, Doc, it was a bunch of those good men that tried to ambush us,” Punchy said as he resumed his place in the bow of the boat. “The mercenary bastard looks like he may have gotten a taste of his own medicine.”
Jack watched the exchange between Ellenshaw and Alexander with mild curiosity. Punchy slammed his hands into the bow wake of the Zodiac and washed his hands. Collins saw that his features were stretched with disgust, or was it something else about the body that disturbed him more than just the death stiffness of the soldier?
“He probably drowned and the rocky bottom of the river did the damage to his body, huh, Colonel?” Mendenhall asked.
Jack looked at Will but said nothing. He eased himself beside Everett.
“I think we can probably only risk about another two miles, then I think our little navy has to get out of this thing and start hoofing it—or as we say, do the Jack Collins two-step.”
“Is that what they say?” Jack asked. “Yeah, I suspect we may be running into trouble soon enough if we stay on the water, these bends and curves are a perfect place to set up a river ambush.”
“Oh good, are we going to walk now?” Charlie asked, actually looking excited to be off the water and into the woods.
“So now we can walk into a land ambush. Is that right, Colonel?” Henri said with his always present smile etched onto his face.
“You can always get out and swim back, Henri,” Collins said, this time with his own smile.
“No, I’ll try for the Twin diamonds, but looking at that Russian soldier, I would say that our chances on land may not be as good as we initially hoped they would be.”
This time the smile on Jack’s face widened as he was actually amused by the Frenchman.
“No one ever said you were dumb, Henri.”
WAHACHAPEE FISHING CAMP
Jason pushed through the prickly bushes that covered the forest floor, having endured over a hundred scratches on his face for his efforts. He hadn’t seen Sarah in the past hour, but heard her cuss loudly about fifteen minutes earlier, so he knew she was faring no better than himself in the tangled undergrowth searching for the fuel injector. Of Marla Petrov, he hadn’t seen or heard a thing since their makeshift search party began.
Jason broke through a particular harsh section of undergrowth with pieces of bushes and thorns sticking to his face and Levis shirt, and into a small clearing of which a rippling creek ran through. He took a deep breath as a small fresh breeze sprang up. He instantly felt the clear air that greeted him after the harsh, closed in and fetid air of the thick tangle foot of the forest. He placed his hands on his knees and saw a million of the small thorns had also penetrated his jeans. He shook his head as he went to the clear creek. He washed his face, feeling the pleasant sting of the water hitting his sweat-filled scratches.
Feeling half human again, he looked into the water after drinking a few cupped handfuls. He instantly saw it and stood so fast that he dropped the M-16 he had rested on his bent knees. When he examined the fuel injector closely, he saw it had been wadded up like a piece of discarded paper. He looked around as the woods surrounding the creek became still. He slowly bent over, still watching the trees and retrieved the four-pound injector and the M-16 from the water.
“Damn it,” he said under his breath. “Why in the hell would someone do that?”
When a crashing noise sounded behind him, Jason thought a bear was coming to claim his small person. He dropped the smashed fuel injector into the water and turned with the M-16 just as he saw Sarah trip and stumble into the clearing.
“You okay?” Jason asked as he reached to steady her.
“Water—oh that looks good,” she said as she walked the few feet to the creek and then sank to her knees. She pushed her head into the cool stream and washed her face, and then she cupped her hands and drank. She took a breath and then turned to face Ryan. “We’re not very good at this wilderness thing, are we?”
Ryan walked to within a few feet of Sarah and then reached into the water and pulled up the battered injector.
“So much for shiny things, huh?” he said as he let the fuel injector slide from his hand and into Sarah’s.
“What the hell, did they take a rock to it?” she angrily asked as she stood up.
“They probably didn’t even know they damaged it.”
They both turned and saw Marla standing just out of the woods. She looked fresh as a daisy and didn’t have a scratch on her.
“Okay, who in the hell are they?” Ryan asked, his temper starting to rise. “And don’t give me any of this mystical bullshit.”
The girl looked from Ryan to Sarah; instead of answering, she walked to the creek and took a drink of water from her cupped hand.
“It doesn’t matter about the damaged part, Mr. Ryan,” she said as she finally looked up. “You don’t need it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jason, let her finish,” Sarah said, eyeing the young woman closely.
The girl straightened and then pointed. “About a hundred yards in that direction.” She stepped into the water and then across the creek and vanished into the woods.
“Jesus, can that girl ever give a straight answer to anything?” Ryan said angrily as he watched Sarah quickly follow Marla.
In extreme exasperation, Ryan followed. The woods were thinner here and for that he was grateful. He saw Sarah’s back as she dipped and then straightened to come through the thinning trees. Suddenly, he ran into her backside as she came to an abrupt halt.
“What the—”
Sarah was just standing there, amazed at the sight she was looking at in the large clearing. Jason stepped around her and his mouth wanted to drop open. There, sitting pristine and shining in the bright sunlight were four, brand-spanking-new Sikorsky helicopters. They were the newest top of the line S-76 turbojet models. Their four bladed rotors drooped and swayed in the light breeze. Ryan brought up the M-16 and Sarah followed suit with the AK-47. Marla turned in front of them and shook her head.
“There’s no one here. I came upon them just before I found you. These are the same ones those Russians arrived in.”
“The pilots must have gone with them,” Ryan said as he started to step out from the tree line, but Marla was quick to grab his arm.
“No, the pilots were ordered to stay, I heard that head Russian myself. I just assumed they went back to Juneau or someplace.”
Ryan listened, but still couldn’t grasp any dang
er. “Okay, we spare one and disable the others.”
“You’re not hearing me, Mr. Ryan, the pilots are missing,” Marla persisted.
“Okay, young lady, you have our full attention, so I think it’s about time you shed a little light on what’s happening around here.”
Marla looked at Sarah, dropping the restraining arm from Ryan.
“Okay, I fear those pilots may have run into the same thing you and Sarah did last night.” Her eyes stayed on Ryan.
“Those gunshots, you mean?” Sarah asked.
Marla just nodded her head once while examining the makeshift landing area where the giant Sikorsky choppers sat. Sarah thought the scene was unreal. The empty helicopters, the wind whistling by the swaying rotors and the open staircases of the four aircraft lent an air of ghostliness to the scene that gave her cold chills.
“Look, Marla, what is happening here?” Sarah persisted with her earlier question.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” Sarah said still looking around, the AK-47 turning as she did.
“You don’t look like the type to believe in myths and legends,” Marla said looking from Sarah to Ryan.
Both of them exchanged looks but didn’t smile at the foolish statement made by the girl. How could she know what they did for a living or the things that they have been witness to?
“We protect one of those legends here, or maybe they protect us, I don’t know. But there are animals in these woods that belong here even more than the Indians that inhabit this area. They were here thousands of years before everyone, and this is their home. I’m afraid those Russians may have done something stupid last night and have paid dearly for it, or soon will. They protect their own.”
Suddenly, there was a crackling sound coming from one of the choppers. It was loud in the stillness that now held sway over the clearing. Sarah looked at Ryan and she could tell he was feeling the same creepiness that overwhelmed her on this bright, clear, sun-filled day. Before she had a chance to ask what the crackling sound was, it came again, and then what seemed like a voice.
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 30
