by Jason Ross
He got the boys settled in for supper, said his goodbyes to Captain Chambers and his wife, and headed to his hotel. He put all thoughts of Aimee aside while he ran a mental inventory of what he could leave behind, given he’d be spending a single night in the snow. When covering that much ground—twenty-five miles each way in snowshoes—ounces became pounds and pounds would eat you alive. Anything he could ditch, he’d ditch. He wasn’t worried about beating the high school boys on the trail, but he needed every advantage to make sure he didn’t lag behind the boss.
The cold and the wind had burned hard lines into Sage’s face. He could see it when he looked at himself in the rearview mirror of the police cruiser. The world-weariness of surviving outdoors had etched into his soul. He would never again be a carefree high schooler like the boys at the ranch. He’d never again sprint the first quarter mile of a five mile run.
He wished the hardness had sunk deeper. He wished it’d cauterized more of his soul because no matter how much he focused on his backpack stove and whether to bring a bigger knife, his heart quailed at the thought of putting hands on Commissioner Pete.
Aimee’s touch would make it okay, at least for tonight. She’d steady his resolve; remind him that he knew nothing about the area’s history, or about Commissioner Lathrop and his family. She’d punctuate her words with caresses and cooing singsong, and he would drift off to sleep in her arms.
Sleep was the only peace he could hope for in this fucked up world.
Lathrop Ranch
Outside Enterprise, Oregon
Wallowa Valley
* * *
Luckily, the arrest team from La Grande P.D. had spent only one night sleeping in the snow. The boys were wet and freezing, and they bitched about it non-stop. Keeping them quiet through the cold, dark night had proven nearly impossible. Captain Chambers threatened to shoot the next boy who spoke out loud.
A malevolent, churning snow cloud had poured over the top of the Blue Mountains as the team of twelve men snowshoed through the pines that afternoon, following the same trail Sage had cut on his recon mission. Other than hundreds of elk tracks and a few coyotes, nothing had cut across the sign of his passing. Preparing cattle for winter probably occupied the people of Wallowa Valley. They hadn’t turned their sights on hunting elk yet, so no one appeared to have ventured into the forests.
The arrest team arrived at final camp after covering twelve miles of trail that day. The boys had been well-prepared for the trek, and other than a lot of blisters—and the bitching— they’d comported themselves well enough. Tonight, they’d stage their ambush, and not a moment too soon.
Pregnant, lofty snowflakes drifted on the breeze. It’d be a night of unsteady winds. A serious snowstorm often did that—halted the other functions of weather until it had its way. Heavy, quiet snow would mute sound, but it would confuse the winds; send them swirling like ballet dancers across the prairie.
A steady wind would’ve been better. Sage worried that the little dog might scent them outside the ranch house and alert the Commissioner. He fretted it might end in violence, with the Commissioner or his family getting hurt. Despite their folksy demeanor and family ties, this mission was still an armed incursion. Sage knew from experience: bad things happened fast when guns were involved.
“It’s a good night for an arrest,” Captain Chambers whispered to Sage.
“Good night for dark deeds,” Sage answered without weighing his words.
It’d been a mistake to say that. He didn’t turn to look at the captain, hoping he hadn’t heard him. Turning to look at the captain would only make it weirder, plus it was utterly dark beneath the cloak of clouds. Not a scintilla of moon showed.
“They’re asleep. We can leave soon,” Sage added to cover his gaff. He’d been watching the house through binoculars. The back corner bedroom, where he assumed the Commissioner and his wife slept, had gone dark.
“It should only take half an hour to get down,” Captain Chambers said.
The urge to turn and check the captain’s face was almost too much, but Sage resisted.
Chambers continued. “Let’s wait until two o’clock before we roll out. I don’t trust these boys to stay quiet, not when they’re cold.”
Sage focused on the tactical issues. “We’d probably be better off making them run laps in their snowshoes because they’re going to freeze their balls off waiting for two a.m.”
The snowflakes were fat and heavy. They floated aimlessly, like children wandering home from school. Too much snow might bog down the snow machines the next morning, but this amount of snow would quiet their footfalls and cover their tracks. It was good weather in which to operate, and in truth, it wasn’t that cold.
A chunk of bile had lodged in Sage’s gut, and it ground at the cold, freeze dried meal he’d choked down for dinner. He hadn’t taken a shit in two days.
On the eve of the mission, he should’ve felt tense, or even excited. He was doing his part in a law enforcement action—like a SWAT team in snowshoes. He had no idea how county lines worked when arresting someone across boundaries. He was following the orders of a police officer, and beyond that, he hadn’t a shred of legal understanding that hadn’t come from watching re-runs of the Dukes of Hazard.
But in his gut, he knew this arrest wasn’t legit. If Commissioner Pete had done anything wrong, he deserved a day in court, not to be swept off his porch with his dick out. Swooping down on a home carrying rifles wasn’t how good men resolved issues of property and cattle.
Captain Chambers wasn’t a good man, no matter what Aimee Butterton said.
Sage had given the man the benefit of the doubt. He’d done his best not to judge the man for shagging another woman. He could even forgive the captain for hoarding food and playing favorites with the locals.
But this raid seemed like a power grab—like a desperate warlord playing out his land-envy using younger men, rifles and a badge.
Sage was in over his head, and the realization felt like an anvil hitting the floor. At seventeen years old, he had plenty of opinions and very little experience. How could he be expected to navigate the dealings of men who owned tracts of land and thousands of head of livestock; men who’d been elected to public office?
He decided: the chunk of bile in his stomach would have to be tolerated. He’d have to follow orders and live with the outcomes. He was a pawn in this game. He didn’t rate an opinion. If he got uppity, odds were good he’d make a bad situation worse. He’d hunker down and keep his promise to his dad, and that meant doing this damned job.
Sage walked circles in the snow. He could feel the captain watching him in the dark. The blood flowed back into his legs and the exercise warmed him. The knot in his stomach loosened a little. He dug out the insulated hose from his Camelbak and sucked down some water.
“You okay?” the captain whispered.
“Yeah. I’m just cold. I’m good to go, sir,” Sage lied.
At two o’clock in the morning, they rallied the boys and padded downhill single-file.
They left nothing at camp. Their plan was to snatch up the Commissioner and have him out before the roar of the snow machines echoed across the valley: clandestine incursion, lightning-fast exfil. They’d whisk him back to La Grande and stick him in a cell until the winter played out.
They bet everything on the snow machines. It’d taken them two days, and all their physical reserves, to sneak into the far reaches of the valley on snowshoes, but the snow machines would cover the same distance in two hours.
If something went wrong, Plan B was to hide the Commissioner in an outbuilding on the edge of the airfield, then steal snow machines from nearby ranches. That’d be Sage’s mission should all else fail, and it’d set them back a couple hours. In either case, they’d be long gone by daybreak—before the commissioner’s family could raise the alarm. Telephones were dead and, most likely, nobody monitored radios through the middle of the night. Even if the family discovered their missing father and rea
ched another house by radio, the ranch houses were all at least a half-mile apart. It’d take at least an hour to go door-to-door raising enough men for a rescue operation.
The snowshoes floated over any ankle-busters that would otherwise imperil their passing in the night. Sage’s blood was up, to be sure, but he couldn’t enjoy it. The mission felt cursed.
Sage stopped abruptly. The captain bumped into his pack. Sage held up his fist, but it was unlikely anyone could see the fist in the black of the cloud-covered moon.
Directly in his path stood a dog. Sage could barely make it out, silhouetted against the snow. It wasn’t the little lap dog that belonged to the commissioner. This skinny, mangy mutt let out a low growl and its back arched with menace. Sage’s rifle drifted into his hands, sliding on its sling, following the movement he’d practiced a thousand times. If he fired his rifle now, the mission would get hairy. The whole section of the valley would hear the gunshot. Sage felt the hand of the captain on his shoulder, steadying him.
The dog growled for a full minute. Sage kept the gun between them, more as a spear than a firearm.
“Coyote,” the captain whispered in his ear.
Sage had always thought of coyotes as being afraid of men, but maybe the wild dog couldn’t see them, or smell them in the snowfall.
The coyote finally went silent, then padded off across the plain. It vanished into the fringe of the storm. Sage sighed and the captain patted his shoulder, apparently eager to get moving again.
Ten minutes after the coyote, they arrived at a cluster of buildings: three barns, a large chicken coop, a smoke house, and the main ranch house. Sage knew from his recon there weren’t on-site quarters for the ranch hands. The arrest team didn’t stop to coordinate. They’d planned this and even practiced it back at Chamber’s ranch. Everyone knew their role.
Sage took ten of the boys and split off toward the motor pool barn. Their job would be to load up the packs and double-check the snow machines.
Captain Chambers headed toward the house with the two biggest boys. They dropped their packs on the trail, and two of Sage’s team snatched them up.
If Commissioner Pete didn’t come out to pee, they’d be forced to go inside and roust him out of bed. Sage prayed that it wouldn’t come to that.
Please, Lord, wake him up with a full bladder and a hankering to check on the snowstorm.
Sage was glad he hadn’t been asked to lay hands on the commissioner. All thin muscle and no fat, he wasn’t nearly as solid as the fifty-year-old rancher. Old man strength was not something to underestimate. That, and Sage had no desire to look him in the eyes.
Once inside the motor pool, Sage flicked on his red headlamp and hung it from the handlebars of one of the snow machines. The machines appeared to be exactly where he’d left them. In an abundance of caution, he checked every gas gauge. Only one of the snow machines was below half-tank, and it was one of the beat up old ones they weren’t taking. He hung the red light on the handlebars and left the boys to strap down the packs.
Every boy went to work, and none of them made the slightest sound. They were probably too scared to dick around for once. For his part, Sage had never been so terrified, not even when he’d been in a gunfight against a mob at the Holland farmhouse. Skulking around another man’s homestead made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
He sidled over to the sliding door and looked toward the ranch house porch, where he’d seen Commissioner Pete take a piss. In the snow-speckled pool of light given off by the solar floodlight on the livestock barn, he could make out the shadows of the captain and his football linemen standing to each side of the door.
Sage checked his watch. It was three a.m..
Time passed slowly, like watching a pond freeze over. The snow fell, heavy and weightless at the same time. The fat flakes soaked up all sound, rendering the night mute and dumb.
Sage checked his watch a hundred times between three a.m. and three-thirty. Almost to the minute at three-thirty, the screen door opened, and the commissioner stepped onto the porch. A scuffle ensued, muffled and dense. The little dog barked once, then squeaked as someone kicked it off the porch. Sage watched it tumble in the snow, then bolt for the motor pool, running for cover. As it flew past his feet, Sage scooped it up. The dog was both startled and comforted. In the red light, Sage could see only the wet eyes and nose, but it squirmed quietly—nothing likely broken.
There was no time to fret over the dog. The captain and his henchmen struggled across the yard and into the motor pool. The commissioner was wrapped up between them. Strangely, he was mostly-dressed. Perhaps he’d intended to check his livestock after his piss. Sage had carried a pair of over-boots in his pack in case the commissioner was taken shoeless.
Sage set the dog down. It bolted under a stack of boxes, alarmed by the scuffle.
One of the big boys had a hand and a wad of cloth clamped over the commissioner’s mouth. The captain whipped out duct tape and did a proper job of gagging him. They zip-tied his hands in front of him with three, heavy ties.
Sage averted his eyes from the struggling man, and watched the house for light. The yip of the dog might’ve woken the wife, daughter or son, and it was his job to deal with them if they came to investigate.
In the gloom, he couldn’t tell if the door had been left open or closed. The screen had closed by itself, but the front door couldn’t be left open. The icy draft would eventually awaken the farm dogs, at the very least.
Sage crossed the yard, his rifle at the low ready. He crept up the porch and his eyes adjusted. The door was indeed wide open.
He eased the screen door open, reached inside, and pulled the heavy, wood door closed. The final click sent a bolt of adrenaline up Sage’s spine. He waited and listened for movement inside. After a minute, when nothing happened, he guided the screen door closed, and backed away from the porch toward the motor pool.
The captain met him at the rolling door.
“Everything good?”
“No movement,” Sage replied.
“We’re loaded. We can drive the snow machines out the back.”
Sage followed the captain inside, found his headlamp and pulled it over his head. Inadvertently, the light passed over the handcuffed and gagged commissioner and a flash of recognition passed between he and Sage.
Sage had never felt such shame. This was a man who had treated him with respect and kindness, even as a trespasser. In the black of night, he had returned the man’s goodwill with villainy. Sage dropped his eyes and looked at the commissioner’s feet. The commissioner was wearing boots.
The arrest team mounted the snow machines, and as planned they fired them up at the captain’s signal. The roar in the barn was deafening after the silence of the raid. They were thirty yards from the farmhouse. The snow muted all, but it seemed very unlikely that eight howling machines wouldn’t roust the sleeping family.
The snow machines roared out the back door of the motor pool. Sage followed, erupting into the brisk night air in the wake of the pungent two-cycle oil. The boy most experienced with snow machines cut the trail in front, followed by the captain with the commissioner tied behind him. Sage was the last in line. The next few minutes would determine whether or not they’d face resistance.
Snowflakes slapped against his cheeks, but it felt like a liar’s freedom; like succumbing to fate. They’d taken the commissioner and they were getting away with it.
It was going to be a long, cold few hours, racing through a snowstorm toward their home county, but the die was cast. No matter how gently the snow fell or how the clouds warmed the earth, the speed of the snowmobiles blew the chill right through Sage’s clothes.
Four of the machines carried two high school boys each. Sage was the least experienced with snowmobiles, so he’d been assigned rear security, and he was alone on his machine. He followed in the groomed tracks of the seven others.
There was no reason to expect the Lathrops to follow. The boys had pulled the ke
ys from the old snow machines and tossed them away. Sage stopped anyway, at the distant edge of the family ranch, and looked back toward the house. The snowfall obscured everything, but he could barely make out the white-blue glow of the barn light. He saw no other lights.
Would he see kerosene lamps burning inside the house this far away through the snow?
The family had to have woken to the sound of the snow machines, but it would be some time before they figured out that Commissioner Pete was overdue back to his bed. By then, the arrest team would be ten miles away.
The captain and the boys were driving the snow machines like Grand Theft Auto, so Sage couldn’t linger on rear security. He popped his goggles back on and chased after the fleeting taillights of his companions.
By the time he caught up with them, three machines were stopped, waiting in a line. They’d traveled maybe five miles from the ranch in just fifteen minutes. At this rate, they’d easily cross the county line before dawn.
Sage pulled alongside the last snow machine in line and shouted over the rumble, “Why’d we stop?”
“Burton’s having trouble with his machine,” the kid shouted.
Halfway up the line, one of the boys madly yanked at the pull start rope. Sage pulled up alongside.
Sage yelled at the boy. “Grab your backpack and leave it. The rest of the group is dropping us. Get on the back of Sherman’s sled.”
The boy complied, and the four sleds at the back of the team were underway again in thirty seconds. The front half of the group had stopped to wait for them on the next rise in the snow-covered county road.
But when Sage’s group reached them, two snow machines had their hoods up, and those boys were hauling on the pull start ropes too. All these snow machines had electric starters. Pulling on the start rope meant they couldn’t get them to catch spark, which made no sense, since the machines had started like eager lions back at the barn.
