Primeval egt-5

by David L. Golemon

  Straight ahead was a large steel door of the walk-in freezer or refrigerator. Jack could hear the hum of the motor as it engaged. He also saw there were two clean round holes where two bullets had punched through it. Collins raised the AK-47 and pointed it at the door and advanced. Punchy kept his M-16 pointed at the upper floors of the store where he suspected the owners living quarters to be. It was another great ambush spot.

  Jack reached the door and stood to the right side next to the large handle. He reached out and pulled on it.

  "If you open that door, we'll kill your man," came a girl's voice.

  "Go ahead and kill him, he's not our man." Jack grimaced, hoping beyond measure he had responded the way he should have. "We killed his companions outside."

  "I'm not falling for that bullshit, you want him dead. Just try me, you Russian prick!"

  Jack looked over at Alexander who was watching from a distance, he shrugged his shoulders, as if saying Jack was on his own on this one.

  "Listen, my name is Collins, I am a colonel in the U.S. army. I have a man here from the Canadian authorities and we're looking for an American woman — that's why we're here. Our plane was just shot out of the sky, and it was that man's friends who did it, so I really don't care if you kill the bastard or not."

  There was complete and utter silence coming from the refrigerator. Jack glanced over at Alexander and nodded toward the door.

  "Ma'am, I am Jonathan Alexander, an agent for CSIS in Quebec. The man is telling the truth. Come out, you won't be harmed, not by us."

  "My grandmother is hurt. One of those bastards shot her in the arm," came the voice, and then that was followed by another, more husky, but feminine protest.

  "I've hurt myself worse with a kitchen knife."

  Jack heard the first voice — that of a much younger person — shush the second. Then he heard the door handle pop, but it still remained closed. Jack took a step to the front and raised the Russian-made weapon. Finally, the door opened and Collins heart raced for a second when he saw a man in the same camouflage fatigues as those outside. He just stood there, his eyes opened, and then just before the colonel fired his weapon, the man simply fell forward.

  Jack's eyes moved from the body to a smallish girl holding an older, heavy woman in the center of the large walk-in. "You were bluffing, he was already dead," Jack said as he bent over and made sure the commando was indeed as he looked.

  "He was hit almost as soon as he took us in here to murder us; must have been stray bullets," the girl said as she started to assist the old lady out of the cold of the icebox.

  Collins, with the aid of Punchy, moved the dead man out of the way to allow the women out. Jack slung his weapon and then went to the other side of the old lady and assisted the girl with the weight.

  "That was pretty good, but what if we were the bad guys?" Jack asked, looking around the ample bosom of the grandmother to see the young, brazen girl dressed in bloody overalls and a knitted cap.

  "I wasn't thinking that far ahead," Marla said as she eased her grandmother into a large desk chair just to the rear of the sales counter.

  "Check the register, dear, and see how much those Russian bastards made off with," the old woman said as she held a hand over the bullet wound in her left arm.

  The girl rolled her eyes as she reached into the large desk and brought out a first-aid kit. "I don't think they were here to rob us, Grandmother," she said as rummaged through the kit.

  "Well, you never know," the old woman said as she grimaced.

  "You said you were looking for an American woman?" Marla asked as she found the small packages of alcohol wipes and antibacterial ointment. "Was her name Lynn?" she asked, not looking up.

  Jack took a deep breath and then leaned heavily against the counter; he found he had no voice to answer the girl.

  Punchy saw Jack's distress and then stepped up and took one of the alcohol wipes from the girl and started cleaning the old woman's wound. It was just a graze, so he wiped and spoke at the same time. "Yes, her name was Lynn. It's his sister."

  The girl looked up and into the blue eyes of Jack Collins. "Yes, I can see that you are her brother, you have the same eyes."

  "Is she… she…"

  Marla took a deep breath and then handed Punchy a tube of antibacterial cream. "She was fine yesterday when she left with those other Russians."

  Jack closed his eyes and then turned away just as the soaking-wet Mendenhall and Ryan, followed by Sarah, Farbeaux, and Doc Ellenshaw, came to the front of the store. Mendenhall and Farbeaux leaned over and was checking the bodies of the two Mounties outside, and Ryan stepped in and leaned over and checked the others.

  Sarah saw Jack as he walked around a few of the stacked shelves full of dry and canned goods. She took his arm and stopped him.

  "She was here; the Russians took her upriver," he said as he finally looked down at Sarah.

  "Then we have a chance of getting her back," she said.

  She saw Jack's lips move but didn't hear the one word he kept repeating.

  "What? What are you saying, I don't get it," she said questioning his tone and his look.

  "He says, my dear Sarah, that his sister is in the hands of what's known to soldiers around the world as, Spetsnaz — specialized killers from the Cold War. Their own bloody government created them and now they don't know what to do with the ones they discharged. The Russian government is terrified of them." Farbeaux looked around at the bodies, "Evidently, they have found gainful employment."

  Sarah McIntire turned to face Farbeaux, who was looking at the tattoo he had uncovered from the dead Russian only a few feet away. Farbeaux tilted his head as he stood and nudged the dead Russian with his boot.

  "And this new development is unsettling to say the least."

  Jack and Sarah both looked at the Frenchman; only Sarah had a question written on her face.

  Farbeaux smiled, but there was no humor there. "I dare say the men that are holding your sister are far more aggressive than I was first led to believe." He looked from Sarah to Collins, his smile gone.

  "You can leave anytime you want, Colonel," Jack said still staring at him.

  Farbeaux tilted his head as if in deep thought. "No, I believe I'll stay a while, and if things get too hot, I can always trade you for me."

  Jack turned away and left. Sarah just looked at Henri, shaking her head.

  "I know I don't disappoint you, my dear — you know who and what I am."

  "That's what gets me, Henri, I know who you are, and you still go lower and lower in my estimation every time you open your mouth."

  Farbeaux watched her leave to follow Collins, and then he turned and saw the young girl looking at him from the porch. She had heard the exchange between the three and the look in her eyes told Farbeaux that he hadn't made a friend with the smallish teenager.

  Marla watched the Frenchman turn and leave, eyeing the icehouse and going in that direction; she then turned and looked at her Grandmother who was getting her arm wrapped by Alexander. "Has the world gone over the edge?" Marla asked as she shook her head in disgust.

  "The world has always been insane, honey; we just isolated ourselves from it."

  Punchy straightened after he finished tending to the old woman's wound.

  "In case you ladies haven't noticed, you're not isolated anymore." Punchy stepped back and then retrieved his weapon and then looked at the young girl who was angry and staring at him.

  "Believe me, Mr. Ottawa, we've noticed."

  * * *

  Jack stood on the porch and surveyed the fishing camp. His eyes roamed over the rock-covered ground and into the tree line. A stiff breeze picked up and made the trees sway against the deep blue sky of the early morning. Everett was busy checking out the icehouse, the small warehouse, and the equipment shed with Jason Ryan. Will Mendenhall and Sarah stood just off the large porch with Charlie Ellenshaw in an attempt to get the soaking-wet, stray-haired professor under some form of control — the m
an could not stop shaking. Sarah used Charlie as an excuse to give Jack the time to think things out. She looked up from Ellenshaw as Henri Farbeaux stepped from inside the store.

  "In case you were thinking about using the radio, Colonel, I regret to inform you that its aerial has been disabled and that dead Russian there placed a bullet into the set before he closeted himself in the icebox. The old woman is fit to be tied."

  Collins didn't turn at the sound of Farbeaux's voice. He was still watching the trees around the camp. Then his eyes went to the Bell Jet Ranger sitting a hundred yards from the water's edge. He saw the bullet holes in the engine housing and knew that the commandos would not have left that radio intact after so thorough a job on the camp's equipment. Out of the seven cell phones on his Event personnel, not one was receiving a signal. Jack was finally realizing that his nonplan for getting his sister back had placed a lot of his people in jeopardy.

  "I believe I am beginning to know how you think, Colonel Collins; as they say, know one's antagonist and you shall know yourself."

  "Word games at this stage of the trip, Henri?" Jack said still hearing the rush of wind through and around the trees, his eyes moving at every twitch of movement.

  "Yes, I do play games, except at this very moment, I am not. You, Colonel, are thinking about ordering everyone here to remain, while you, afraid for their safety, and ever the good commander are going to go it alone, as you Americans are fond of saying."

  Collins kept his features neutral, but knew the Frenchman was far more intelligent than his file said he was. Director Compton had tried many times to tell him that, but Jack had always figured one way or another, Farbeaux could be outsmarted. He was now learning that little task may not be possible.

  "If you attempt to go into this wilderness alone, you will die, and your sister will perish with you. It's that simple, Colonel. And I dare say that I will not get my reward for you playing the hero, and your own people will nod and agree to do what you order them to do, but in the end they will follow you after you have left. So, let's save us some time here, and not even bring that suggestion up."

  "If you're going to follow those bastards, everything you need is in that supply shed in the back. All of my son's guide equipment is in there. He had a small arsenal of hunting rifles and ammunition — he stocked up seeing the fact that we don't live right down the street from Walmart."

  Jack and Farbeaux had not noticed the old woman and her granddaughter as they stood just inside the door. Punchy was there also, wrapping his right hand with gauze. He acted as though he didn't care to hear what was being discussed.

  "I'm thinking that we should use a boat to get down river and get some authorities in on this," Collins said, more of a test for the grandmother than a statement of what he was truly thinking.

  "Authorities?" the old woman said with a smirk. "They killed all the authorities north of Jackson's Bluff if you hadn't noticed." Marla placed a hand on her grandmother's arm and tried to get her to calm down. "I don't fancy leaving them Russians to the authorities. You seem like people who have dealt with this sort of thing before; just do what it is that comes naturally to you folks. I want those pigs out of those woods."

  "We'll need most of what you have if we are to go north," Farbeaux said before Jack could say anything.

  "You can have everything we can spare. While you are gone, I will send some of the boys down river to round up whatever 'authorities' they can find, and get them up here as soon as they can."

  Jack nodded at the old woman as she gestured for them to come back inside. "C'mon, we have a hand-drawn map in here that's more accurate than anything you boys have studied, and I think I know where those bastards are heading."

  Sarah, Mendenhall, and Charlie saw what was happening, and followed the four people into the store. Jack turned and saw them.

  "Start getting enough food for at least five days — move!"

  They quickly started following Jack's determined orders.

  Collins turned away and saw that Marla had stayed and waited for him.

  "My grandmother is determined to give you a fighting chance; she's angry and maybe should stop to think about what it is she is doing. Where you are going, the land is unforgivable. More than a few dozen have gone up the Stikine in just my lifetime and never came back. And that was without people out there that wanted to kill them."

  Collins didn't say anything.

  Marla held eye contact for a moment, and then stepped aside when she saw the determination in Jack's eyes. She lowered her head and then saw Mendenhall taking several canned goods from the shelf.

  "Put those down, you'll have to travel light because we only have two boats in the shed. The freeze-dried stuff is back here, enough to feed an army."

  Mendenhall, arms brimming with canned soup, salmon, and chili, looked deflated. He glanced over at Sarah and they both rolled their eyes.

  "I could have gone all year without hearing that you carried freeze-dried rations." Mendenhall slowly started placing the delectable canned goods back on the shelf.

  "Someday, we have to buy stock in the companies that make that crap," Sarah said as she, too, started placing cans back where she had gotten them.

  "I kind of like the freeze-dried food," Charlie Ellenshaw said looking around and pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose as he saw Mendenhall shaking his head.

  "Why doesn't that surprise me, Doc?"

  * * *

  "Now, we are here," the old woman said pointing to the fishing camp. "You won't have to cross the river; stay on this side, and you'll end up on the northern Stikine all the way up to where those people may be."

  Jack watched as her finger pointed to the rounded bend in the Stikine more than a hundred and twenty miles north of their current location.

  "And how do you know that is where they'll be?" Collins asked.

  The grandmother turned to face the Frenchman, the American, and the Canadian. "Because that's where that damn L. T. Lattimer said he found his gold — that is what they are after, right?"

  "I didn't think Lattimer was that well known," Punchy said as he popped four aspirin into his mouth.

  The old woman smiled as she turned fully to face the others. They all could see that at one time in her life, the heavyset jovial lady had been as beautiful as her young granddaughter, but age and time had caught up with her, but to her credit, she looked as if she really didn't care that her looks were gone. She looked around until she saw the thin man she had seen enter the store. Charlie Ellenshaw was looking at a large can of bug repellant, reading the ingredients closely.

  "L. T. Lattimer was an arrogant, untrustworthy man who was a cancer to this part of the Stikine, a most unreliable sort. We learned of his possible fate from that tall and soaked drink of water right there," she said pointing from the back room to where Charlie stood.

  Ellenshaw scratched his butt and then felt the eyes on him. He turned and saw everyone in the small office looking his way. He turned his head, thinking that someone was behind him, and then he realized it was indeed himself that was the center of attention. He was about to ask what it was he had done, when he saw the old woman. He squint his eyes and then recognition lit his features.

  "That's right, you — I remember everything. The way you came back here with the rest of those hippie boys and girls, talking about Lattimer."

  Charlie placed the bug repellent down and nervously smiled. "I remember you. You warned us to watch ourselves with Lattimer. I also told you about the animals that lived in that area. You didn't ever deny that anything that remarkable could live there."

  Charlie swallowed as the memory of those days returned. He shook his head and felt weak in the knees.

  "As I was saying, he knows more about that area than I do."

  "Tell me, madam, did anyone ever go back and look for Mr. Lattimer?" Ellenshaw asked, getting himself back under control.

  "My boy spent a month looking for L. T. and never found a thing. Never found
your monsters, either," she said turning back to Charlie.

  Ellenshaw looked down at the floor, still feeling the others looking at him. He knew they weren't believers in his story of what the world called Bigfoot that inhabit this part of the world, but he didn't care, either; he knew what he had experienced that summer in 1968.

  "It's okay, boy, you did real good back then just getting the rest of those students out of there, and back down the river, that's more than most would have done. You have nothing to prove to me," she said and when Charlie looked up at her, she winked. That made him feel better and he looked away, embarrassed.

  "Come here, Mr. Science, and join us at the map," Jack said, nodding that he agreed with Helena.

  The old woman gave Charlie Ellenshaw a crooked smile as he timidly stepped into the small office.

  "As I said, the northern Stikine is unkind to fools." She then turned back to the map. "And like I said a minute ago, we have a stash of weapons, mostly hunting stuff that we have found in the woods from time to time. We don't hunt ourselves here as we have always left the wildlife be. But you're welcome to them; it's a small arsenal if the truth be told. A lot of smart-ass doctors and lawyers who wouldn't listen to reason; let's just say they may have come across something that wasn't as sporting as a deer or elk. That's right, my friend, I listen to the tales that the Indians talk about at night same as everyone else."

  "So you believe in that hokey crap about Bigfoot?" Alexander asked, looking almost insulted at the stories that Charlie had been spewing all the way up north.

  "Thank you," Jack said, cutting off any further comments about what wasn't really important.

  "As I said, you are welcome to all those guns and equipment," she said eyeing Punchy Alexander with what amounted to total disdain, "but you listen to me now." She pulled at Jack's sleeve and nodded toward Charlie. "Do not venture into the woods ten to twelve miles north of the Stikine River. Do you hear me? Even if your quarry goes to ground there! Stay out of that area."

  She turned and pointed at a spot on the large map of about a thousand square miles.