by JT Sawyer
Mitch’s mouth was agape. “Thomas Monroe from the Pentagon is knee-deep in this shit-show?”
“It would seem so. All we had was this hostage’s loosely woven tale but once we began looking into Nelson Ritter, it was clear his company had provided mercenaries to various dictatorships in Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. That’s where I came in, going undercover at Aeneid.”
She clasped her knees to her chest while letting out a sigh. “The data file I intercepted implicated a group of Iranians in the U.S. who were going to launch a series of lone-wolf attacks using weapons obtained from Aeneid. Weapons that are slated to arrive in the next forty-eight hours. But where? And when is the attack supposed to occur—those are the things that have kept me awake these past few nights.”
Mitch scooped up some sand and let it filter between his calloused fingers then tossed the rest against the rock wall as his face turned grim. He thought about how his world had just made an abrupt turn, like a vehicle that had spun out on an icy bridge and tumbled into frigid waters. He’d had enough of covert operations when he was in the Special Forces and had worked hard to set up his life in a job that allowed him to use his specialized skills but that provided more clarity of purpose and accountability. Now, he was on the run and there was a traitor in his own FBI field office—but who? The effects of the heat and the day’s events were causing his head to throb. All he was certain of was that his career and reputation had the potential to be swept away in the fierce current that washed up at his door with Dev’s arrival. It was like his old life was sucking him back in and Anatoly was the fisherman at the reel. He needed to get out of the wilderness and get some answers. If he could locate the mole then he could possibly work from the inside to help thwart Aeneid’s plans if there was time. Though, Mitch mused, if the assistant sec-def was involved in this fantastical story then who else was on his payroll?
Dev took in a deep breath and then another, her head swiveling to their right. “Is that cedar?”
“Close—it’s juniper. The two trees look and smell a lot alike but we don’t have any true cedars in Arizona,” Mitch said laconically, pointing to a cluster of junipers on the slopes beside them as his head still swam with the details of Dev’s story.
“When my father was on leave at home, he and I would always spend the evening after dinner sitting in the small grove of cedar trees in our backyard. That fragrance is always so comforting to me.”
Dev picked up a broken twig and snapped it in half, smelling the bark. She tucked it in her shirt pocket and then looked over at him. “So where do we go from here?”
“We need to make our way overland towards the interstate. From there, we’ll hopefully have cell reception and we can use your phone to call my bureau chief and fill him in on the intel you’ve uncovered.”
“Assuming he’s not on Aeneid’s payroll,” said Dev.
Mitch hissed out a breath. “Ryker, ah, shit—maybe. He’s a pretty unimpressive guy—like a houseplant that talks. Crimony, who knows if he is—this whole thing is fucked up.”
Mitch did a scan of the distant horizon and then shook his head. “Unfortunately for us, we’re in a region where there are few cell towers, though I never used to mind that until now.”
He arched back, staring out beyond the lip of the cave at the sky. “It looks like those dark monsoon clouds to the north are going to be dumping on us soon. Normally, we’d want to stay put in such weather but that rain will provide good concealment for our passage and obscure our tracks along the mesa above.”
She sighed and looked at him. “I’m afraid we’re Velcroed to each other until we can find a way out of this region.”
Mitch glanced up, studying the contours of the moon that stood like a cloaked orb over the silent valley below. Being cut off from the outside world made him feel like he could be back in Afghanistan on a long-range mission that no one knew about. There wouldn’t be any combat search-and-rescue choppers flying over the horizon. They were completely cut off with a team of ruthless mercenaries on their trail. Interstate 17 was still another twenty miles away with some of the most treacherous terrain in Arizona between them and their destination. If they were to make it there by sunrise, they’d have to push the limits of endurance in a brutal landscape. He was sure his pursuers would be equipped with night-vision or infra-red devices and potentially even drones. Would it be enough to overcome the technology working against them on the other end? He wasn’t sure any longer and his mind reflected back on the guerrilla tactics used by the Apaches in this same region over a century ago, when manpower ruled and modern technology was non-existent.
As if sensing his thoughts, Dev stood up beside him. “Even if we dispatch the teams pursuing us, we can’t remove the greater threat orbiting the sky miles above our heads which can track our every move with satellites. They’ll just keep sending in more teams to this location. I’m probably preaching to the choir but time and distance are our greatest allies. We need to get out from under the radar as fast as possible.”
He clenched his fists and took a deep breath then grabbed his rifle. He could hear the strength of Anatoly flowing through her words and wondered for a minute if he was in the presence of his old mentor.
“Let me work my voodoo out here and give these guys a chase they won’t live to talk about. After that, you can guide us through the keyboard wilderness.”
The soil had changed from the fine sugar sand they had been hiking in the arroyo to a clay-limestone base with a fine surface of talcum-like dust. Mitch was intimately aware of the nuances of each surface and what the likelihood was of having tracks retained in the different soils. Some, like the type they were on now, would blow away with the first gust of wind, eroding any tread details but retaining the foot outline in the compressed impression beneath. The key to counter-tracking was all in route selection: choose a path that had plenty of rocks, logs, or hard surfaces to avoid leaving tracks in the first place. As he walked, he unconsciously maneuvered around the softer areas, opting for sandstone slabs that would provide concealment of their passage without burning up too much time deviating from their route.
Mitch tore into a pouch of emergency chow from his pack, choking down the dry tablets that tasted like chalk. “Damn, I can see why they’re called survival rations.” He offered a handful to Dev but she waved them away.
“You need to keep up your energy level.”
“Vomiting after eating that won’t help.”
“Fair enough.”
“Besides, I ran in an adventure race last month and did the entire thing on very little food. I will be fine.”
Mitch just raised his eyebrows while gagging down the last tablet of chocolate putrescence, then neatly folded the foil packet and tucked it into his vest pocket.
Chapter 15
Perry was walking point through the canyon, which had narrowed considerably since their last stop. The moonlight wasn’t of much help as it was just beyond the cusp of the rim and he had been relying on a specialized purple headlamp for discerning tracks. This color was the best in the spectrum for detecting disturbances on the ground and he’d used it many times on long-distance night searches in the desert, pursuing fugitives with Mitch.
In some ways tracking at night was easier than during the day as you controlled the angle of light. But what you couldn’t see was the big picture of terrain features ahead and any potential ambush points. In an agency-wide search, that wasn’t usually a problem as you had a hundred guys pounding the ground looking for signs along with horseback and helicopter support. Perry had eschewed the latter, telling Ryker the impending storm would only put more people at risk. He also suspected Mitch would be pushing forward in an all-out march to make it to the interstate and hitch a ride out of the area. At least that’s what he kept telling himself he would do if the tables were turned. He knew Mitch was the better tracker and he was glad that he was in a large group that would soon have drone support and vehicles once they could climb out of
the canyon.
He passed by a currant bush and then backed up a foot, pushing the low-lying brush aside and directing his light at a wedge-shaped area of sand. Perry knelt down and angled the purple light around the area, noticing a faint heel impression, the half-moon shape barely visible. He walked around the bush, looking for more disturbance, and then swung his headlamp up a faint incline of rocks that led to the rim.
“We head up from here.” He motioned to the others with his upright thumb as he resumed leading. He saw Drake staring at the ground with a curious expression.
“You sure this is the way?” said the brutish figure.
“Just as sure as I am about your brain being the size of a walnut. Now shut up and move.”
Perry had no desire to huddle around the track and explain to the others what he deduced and how. His heart was racing, knowing that Ritter expected results.
Perry thought about the dead agents a few miles back in the canyon. He felt a tinge of remorse at the skilled men who had met their end. He didn’t care that they had wives or kids or were good guys, only that they were fellow warriors who had honed their fighting skills to tremendous standards to be recognized as worthy of being in the FBI. Then he thought about his own skills and his former career aspirations before falling under the spell of Nelson Ritter at a weapons expo in Las Vegas two years previously. Over the ensuing months and through many meetings at the CEO’s home, he and Ritter had come to realize they shared the same disenfranchised outlook on working for the federal government. Perry’s own disillusionment went beyond being disgruntled. He was furious at the rejection letters in his personnel file, indicating he wasn’t considered a prime candidate for the coveted bureau chief position of the Southwest Division. He figured it was due to his lack of political connections in Washington. He had spent the past decade climbing the regional ladder, attending extraneous social events to further his status, and he had an exemplary performance record. The final straw came nine months earlier when he had been passed over for Evan Ryker, a D.C. desk jockey, who was acting as the new interim director. Perry surmised his goals had tumbled down into an icy crevasse from which there was no return. All he wanted now was the money Ritter had promised then he would depart the U.S. and start over in another country. He thought of opening his own private security firm somewhere that was untapped by Ritter and others like him. There was nothing holding him in America. Even his wife, who was nothing more than a domestic ornament he’d acquired to maintain an image of stability in the eyes of the bureau, was of little use to him now.
Perry figured he would assist with this leg of the operation by capturing Sanchez and then figure out what to do with Mitch when the time came. The sizable funds he was getting from Ritter would help soothe a remorseful conscience, which he hadn’t noticed much until a few hours ago.
As the group pushed over the edge of the canyon, arriving on the mesa, Perry flicked off his light. The moon provided enough to see the main terrain features and he suspected that the interstate would be visible in a few miles. The ominous cloud formations to the north were showing signs of lightning discharge and he hoped the storm would hold off long enough for them to get across the open terrain of the mesa.
“Call the men in the jeeps and have them rendezvous with us at the road juncture coming up in two miles,” he said to Drake while sifting over the topographic map features on his GPS screen. “From there, you can set up the drones and we can trim off some time locating these two.”
When Drake was done relaying the coordinates, he moved beside Perry. “So, this guy that’s with Sanchez, he’s FBI too—how’s that?”
“I keep asking myself the same thing. They obviously have a prior connection.”
“This woman has been a fucking headache for Aeneid. She hacks our system, drops a few of our guys, and then disappears only to show up in this rat hole of a state. What’s her end game, I wonder?”
Perry just smirked, growing more irritated with each passing minute at the man’s presence. “At the end of the day, she probably wants what we all do: peace of mind knowing she made a contribution to humanity and left the world a better place.”
Perry’s philosophical sarcasm left Drake puzzled, as he’d intended. The disgruntled FBI agent strode onward, hoping the large man would step on a pit viper and give Perry a reason for ending the surly goon whose IQ seemed on par with the boulders around them.
Chapter 16
The plump moon hung in an obsidian sky, providing enough illumination that Mitch could make out the rock-strewn path leading up the mesa above the caves.
“Next to dodging any encounters with the hostiles on our trail, our biggest concern is going to be inadvertently stepping on a rattlesnake in the rubble ahead,” he said as they crept over the rock scree that came off the mesa at a forty-degree angle and was over a hundred yards in length. Mitch thought back to the time he had been nabbed by a copperhead snake during a sniper training course at Fort Bragg when he crawled too close to a cluster of cattails. That time he was lucky to be in the thirty-percent category of people who receive dry bites each year and he walked away with two vampire-like puncture wounds and a cool story to tell at the bar later.
“Snakes—are they really a problem out here or are you just screwing with me?”
“We’re at 3000 feet. The higher elevation means we won’t have to contend with as many nasty creepy-crawlies like the lower desert but we still have to be hyper-alert for where we are placing our hands and feet.”
“I would have thought scorpions would be a bigger problem out here but thanks for jolting my nerves even more,” Dev said as she followed behind him, being sure to step where he had just been. “I remember being in Jordan once and having a scorpion crawl up my field jacket—that was a long night.”
“Scorpions—oh, yeah, they’re out here too, probably in far greater numbers than the snakes but we’re not going to be sleeping on the ground so I’m not as worried. And the cougars on the prowl at night are mainly after mule deer so we should be OK on that end.”
“Fantastic—anything else you want to share with me?”
“Well, there was this one time that I stepped on a basking Gila monster on our ranch but…” He paused and turned back to grin, noticing her serious expression. “Just kidding.”
“You may be use to crawling around in the brush but I’d rather take my chances in a dark alley in the city than be out here right now. How much farther is the damn highway?”
“Well, it’s between not close and too far.”
Halfway up, Mitch came across a mangled section of old cattle fencing that had become dislodged from a rock slide. He looked at the tangled heap of barbed wire and then removed the Leatherman from his belt, snipping off a twenty-foot-long section and coiling it up. Mitch made sure they kept their route confined to the rocks so their tracks would be reduced. The Hollywood notion of brushing out your tracks with a handful of twigs did nothing to cover your route but only gave pursuers another type of pattern to search for instead of boot prints.
As they crested the ridge onto the cholla-lined mesa, the landscape ahead flattened out. It looked like one continuous plane that went on for a dozen miles or more with a jagged mountain range as the backstop to the north. Echoing off the rocky walls were the sounds of a pack of coyotes that were working the scrub below for jackrabbits.
Mitch let his eyes adjust to the new visuals while flaring his nose up to take in the odors around them. All he noticed was the constant fragrance of creosote bushes and the flowers of agave whose eight-foot-long stalks jutted up from the earth like desert sentinels. He could make out the faint undulating lights of vehicles on the interstate to the northwest but had underestimated the distance. “Shit, this is going to be more of a trek than I thought.”
Dev had come up alongside him and was catching her breath. “As I recall from my military days, the average person can cover around 2-3 miles an hour. That’s going to be quite a push.”
“That’s
for the average person on level terrain,” he said. “In canyon country like this, and traveling at night—and if we get dumped on by that storm cell in the distance, I’d say more like 1-2 miles an hour, especially since we’re gonna have to stay off the dirt roads.”
He looked over at her, noting her athletic figure. “Fortunately for us, we’re not the average hikers, are we?”
“Is that your confident side or cocky side shining through?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe a little of both. Either way, we will make it. Just keep in mind that we’re not going to stop every ten minutes to remove cactus spines. We’ll patch ourselves up afterwards.”
“You’re not out with a tourist. I can handle myself out here, perhaps better than you.”
“You’re forgetting I grew up in these parts.”
“What’s the longest you’ve ever walked in one day with a full ruck?” she said, standing with her hands on her hips and chin up.
“That’d be during SF selection when I did 39 miles in one night.”
She grinned. “Forty-two miles in one night in Tunisia after escaping with a hostage we freed.”
“How long have you gone without water in the heat while on an extended op?” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
Dev looked up at the stars, mulling over the answer. “Hmm…I’d say around sixteen hours along the Somali coast.”
“Pfff…was that moving or at rest?”
“We were in a lay-up position the entire time but it was around 118 degrees during the day.”
“Shit, there you go. I once did eleven hours without any water in triple-digit heat while on a mission with the Kurds.”
“Well, it looks like we both get admission to the mutual admiration club—now can we get moving?”
As they continued walking along the rocky terrain, their banter continued with each trying to outdo the other until their mouths grew dry. Mitch shared some of his scant water and then finished off the last mouthful.
