Hanging back so he could bring up the rear, Ray grabbed the rifle from Rena’s hands and gave it a quick inspection.
“You sure you know how to use this?”
Rena glared at the crewcut park ranger, then abruptly grabbed at the rifle. Ray dug in his heels and pulled back. A silent tug-of-war ensued, punctuated by soft grunts. His boots leaving visible tracks in the dirt, the ranger lost ground inch by inch.
“Hey man,” Bob said, stepping between the antagonists. “Leave her alone.” The wispy beard dangling from his chin wagged as he spoke.
Ray glared at the floral supremacist—a wasted gesture with his eyes hidden behind his shades.
“No, really. I think she can take you. And she’s good with that rifle.”
Ray let go of the rifle, sending Rena sprawling in the dirt. He flexed his fingers to pump blood back into the strained digits.
“Good with a rifle? Where in hell did she learn to operate an M-16?”
“Everybody at the Center gets weapons training. It’s part of why we were assigned to the team.”
“No shit?”
Rena rose from the ground with the gun in hand. She brushed dust from her breasts and shorts with her free hand.
“I practice all the time,” she said, spitting the words along with a few pine needles.
“On what?”
“Cattle mostly. Sometimes SUV dealerships or-“
Ray tugged his sunglasses down his nose and peered at the squat environmentalist with unobstructed eyes.
“You shoot cows?”
Rena sniffed and turned away.
“Hey man,” Bob whispered. “They eat those beautiful desert plants.”
“We usually use AK-47s, though,” Rena added. “They’re a lot tougher than these plastic toys.”
Ray gaped.
“Oh, that’d be easy to explain,” Terry commented. “Federal forest rangers armed with Russian surplus weapons.”
“Well … maybe,” Rena said. “But the AKs are a lot easier to maintain. I can field-strip one in the dark.”
Far ahead and entirely oblivious to the tumult at the rear of his column, Jason stopped in his tracks along the trail and held up his hand.
“What’s wrong,” Samantha asked. She reached her hand out and brushed Jason’s bare shoulder.
“Um … uh …” the team leader stuttered, momentarily distracted. He stared into the woman’s eyes. Bambi, he thought. Just like Bambi.
“Is something wrong?” Samantha repeated.
Jason shook his head.
“No, but I heard something. It sounded like somebody yelling ‘Champ’. Who in Hell is a champ?”
Chapter 24
With the red nylon pouches of his doggie backpack flapping against his furry flanks, the black-and-white beast launched himself at a large boulder along the rock-strewn floor of the canyon. His paws splayed in four directions, the animal tightly gripped the steep rock surface. The tips of his claws extended into any cracks or crevice that could provide support. With a sudden heave, he hopped forward, set his grip again, and then pulled himself to the top. Eyes wide, panting and grinning, the dog stood atop the boulder, gazing down the canyon. He turned to gaze at his companions, his tail wagging wildly in celebration.
“Goddamnit, Champ,” Lani yelled. “Get down from there!”
“Is that his full name?”
Lani glanced at Rollo, then continued walking down-canyon, away from Geronimo Spring and the trail from the rim.
“What?”
“Is Goddamnit Champ the dog’s formal name? I mean you always say those words together when you’re pissed at the dog. I figure it’s like some moms who address their kids informally—like calling a boy ‘Johnny’—then get all formal when the kids step out of line.” He cupped his hand to his bearded mouth and called out, “Oh, J-o-o-o-n-a-th-a-a-a-n!”
Lani stared.
“I can’t tell whether you’re serious or not.”
Scott sighed.
“He’s just needling you, hon.”
Rollo chuckled.
“Well, you do treat that dog like a baby.”
Lani shot a look at her boyfriend. She smiled.
“Well, Scott does call Champ our baby substitute.”
“Oh really?”
“Oh crap.”
“That’s adorable.”
“Leave it alone, Rollo.”
Serenaded by chorus of chuckles shared all around, the three stepped slowly and carefully along the floor of the canyon. They stepped over rocks when possible, and hopped from one to another when it wasn’t.
The spatter of raindrops picked up in frequency, now landing faster than the wet freckles they left could evaporate from rock and dirt. Scott glanced up just as the canyon lit up with a bright flash. Moments later, a dull boom echoed through the rocky corridor.
Without a word, he dropped his pack to the ground, and fished out a small, tightly stuffed nylon bag. From this he quickly extracted a rain jacket. As he cinched the zipper under his chin, he looked up to see Lani shrugging into her own jacket. Rollo patiently stood in place, already hidden under a voluminous poncho that fit over his head, body and pack like a dirt-encrusted mumu.
The older man snorted.
“You’re gonna sweat like a pig in that thing,” he warned, pointing at the jacket. “You’d stay dryer in the rain than you will in that sauna suit.”
Scott flamboyantly reached under each of his arms to unzip vents and let the air circulate.
“Oooh. Fancy.”
Lani glanced back the way they’d come.
“We should probably get going. I don’t know if we’re being followed, but I don’t want them catching up with us.”
“We’re being followed,” Rollo said. “There’s no way they can let us get away with that video that Scott took.”
Scott fired off a sharp look.
“I hope you’re not trying to lay this on my shoulders. You were pretty enthusiastic about playing junior detective, if I remember right.”
“Nope. Just stating a fact. They’re after us.”
The three walked in silence for several minutes, while the fourth member of the group scouted ahead for hostile rabbits.
“So,” Lani broke in. “What are we going to do with that video? Is it worth all this trouble?”
“Damned if I know if it’s worth it,” Scott answered. “But since we’re going to take heat for having the thing, we might as well do something with it.”
“We gonna get those bastards?” Rollo asked.
“Maybe.”
Scott suddenly stumbled and stubbed his toe against a boulder, the pain penetrating the rubber bumper on the light-hiking shoe. He unleashed a steady stream of profanity as he hopped on his undamaged foot, clutching at the offended limb.
Lani bent to examine the injured toe. She clutched helpfully at the foot, cradling it in order to administer any necessary medical attention. In imminent danger of losing his balance on the wet rocks, Scott finally waved her off.
“Are you OK?”
Scott cursed once more, and then set his foot back down on the ground.
“I will be.”
Rollo looked on, smirking.
“Oh you kids and your crazy dances.”
Scott unleashed another round of profanity.
“Was that French? I’m pretty sure that was something filthy in French.”
“Italian,” Scott snapped. “I can offend in four languages.”
The trio continued down the canyon, Lani giving Scott’s foot an occasional look of concern. Scott responded by deliberately compensating for the ache in his toe, so that his limp became a strut.
“Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I’m fine.”
Rollo cleared his throat.
“So, you said ‘maybe’?”
“What?”
“You said ‘maybe’ we could get these bastards.”
“Oh yeah. Well, one of the things I did for my late, unlamente
d employer was maintain a distribution list for press releases. When I wanted to try to scare up a press mention about a conference or an article, I’d cook up a press release with our PR flacks and fire it off to the list. It’d automatically get sent to a couple of hundred tech reporters.”
Lani shot him a glance.
“Could we send the video-?”
“Nope. It’s only set up for text messages. But if we can get in range of a cell tower, I can upload the video to YouTube. Then we can send out an e-mail press release pointing a few hundred journalists to the thing.”
Rollo paused, and then squinted at Scott through the rain. Water rolled off the brim of his hat and streamed from his poncho.
“I thought you got fired. Isn’t that gonna crimp your plans to use the company press list?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe again!”
“Maybe, I said. But I doubt it. I worked there for a long time, and I gave myself a few extra passwords while I had the opportunity. And they’ve always been slow about deleting accounts and enforcing basic security. They don’t do any of the things our articles advised our readers to do.”
Rollo turned his face back down the canyon.
“So … maybe we’ll be able to show that video clip to a bunch of geeks who might not know what to make of it anyway.”
“Maybe so.”
“You have any other ideas?”
Scott looked at the sky. A flash of lightning lit his face, and the roar of thunder crashed from the canyon walls.
“Yep. I’m thinking that we’re walking in a dry streambed in a rainstorm. Maybe that’s not a good idea. Let’s find a place to hole up.”
Chapter 25
Tim fumed, building a head of steam with every step he took away from Jason and the rest of the crew. He stalked toward his rendezvous with a Forest Service truck somewhere along Woody Mountain Road—where, exactly, depended on how fast he walked and how hard the driver stood on the gas pedal. He stepped along briskly, with the fire behind him, though he felt little cause for concern. The wind had died down and the rain put a literal damper on the fiery festivities.
The weather pissed him off. They’d planned on high winds and dry air to do most of their work for them, but nature had something else up its sleeve. The fire should have been roaring out of control by now, consuming dry duff and beetle-damaged ponderosa pines in wholesale lots. Instead, it sputtered along. The blaze was less of a raging inferno, than a cozy weenie roast.
Speaking of weenies … Jason pissed him off. That little weirdo couldn’t organize a Girl Scout outing. How do you forget drip torches? How do you abandon your protective gear? How do you get yourself photographed by some random wanderer at the ass-end of a sealed-off road?
And whatever was developing between the team leader and that strange plant-freak girl couldn’t be good news.
But most of all, the strangers pissed him off. First and foremost, Tim considered himself a law-enforcement officer—an agent of official policy and defender of order. You do not spy on law enforcement officers. Sneaking around in the brush with a smart phone suggested an unseemly distrust of officialdom.
And you certainly don’t shoot at law enforcement officers. That leads to anarchy. And Tim wasn’t about to let anarchy gain the upper hand.
Tim felt the weight of his gun on his hip—his official, Park Service-issued gun, and he felt the weight of the Park Service in the weight of that gun, and the weight of the government behind the Park Service. The more Tim thought about the situation, the more he determined to set things right, once and for all.
Step by muddy step, water seeped into Tim’s shoes, soaked his shorts, dripped from his short-cropped hair and fogged his sunglasses. And all of that pissed him off too.
Eventually, a pair of headlights turned into a Forest Service truck. Tim stepped forward, pulled the door open, and thrust his head inside.
“Not happy! I’m definitely not happy.”
The driver gaped. Only then did Tim recognize Van Kamp himself at the wheel, sitting far forward to reach the vehicle controls. Two BLM rangers filled the back seat, apparently along as muscle for the pint-sized conspirator.
“Ranger Vasquez? Is that you?”
“Who else? Sir.”
“Do you need medical attention? Food?”
“I just need an overnight pack and ammunition. Lots of ammunition.” He looked at the BLM men in the back of the truck. One of them gulped and a bead of sweat fell from his brow to his collar.
“Oh, and a new shirt.”
Chapter 26
Van Kamp’s nerves were well and truly frayed by the time he arrived back at the district headquarters. Assisted by the persuasive powers of the BLM rangers—one of whom now nursed a wrenched shoulder and threatened to file a worker’s compensation claim—Van Kamp had convinced Tim to delay his return to the chase for a day. That gave the park ranger a night to rest and, more importantly, cool off before interacting once again with the public.
Soles thumping against the scuffed linoleum floor of the hallway leading to his office, Van Kamp thought troubled thoughts as he watched his shoes and pushed his way past the door to his office—then bumped head-first into a sports jacket in need of a good dry-cleaning.
“Christ! How the hell did you get in here?”
“Your staff let me in,” Greenfield boomed. He stepped back from the doorway, sat in the chair opposite the desk—the very chair in which Van Kamp habitually terrorized any subordinate who displeased him—and crossed his hands over his belly. “I haven’t had any word from my people and I want to see if you have any news.”
Van Kamp uttered a string of obscenities, then slipped behind his desk and climbed into his chair.
“They let you in?”
“Well, they’ve seen me with you.”
Van Kamp grimaced.
“They’ve seen me with the plumber, too. That doesn’t mean they should serve him coffee and cookies in my office.”
Greenfield smiled, a little hesitantly.
“Bottled water and a turkey sandwich, actually.” The big-screen, biblical-epic voice managed to sound almost apologetic. “So, have you heard from them?”
Van Kamp stared, while considering whether to throw a temper tantrum. After a moment, he choked down his anger.
“Not from them, but from one of the Park Service people on the team.”
“Not one of those flat-head, wannabe—”
“Yep. One of them. The Park Service takes its law enforcement duties ve-e-e-ry seriously. I’m told that the fire is set, but there’s trouble—the job was half-botched and they were photographed in the act.”
Greenfield grumbled and sat deeper in his chair. He sank even further into his clothes, seeming to disappear into his jacket and wrinkled shirt as Van Kamp repeated the tale he’d heard from Ranger Tim Vasquez.
“I’m thinking maybe we should wait and see what happens in Sycamore Canyon before be move forward. We can send more people in to find the witnesses—people who aren’t complete fuck-ups. When things settle down, we’ll get back to business.”
Greenfield stirred. His bearded chin rose from his chest. His eyes flashed and met those of Van Kamp, seeming to bore into his skull.
“No, goddamnit!” His fist crashed onto the desk, sending pens and papers flying. “We won’t be timid. Forget those idiots in Sycamore Canyon. We’re accelerating our schedule and committing ourselves to our plan, all or nothing!” Beard wagging, voice rising, Greenfield raised his eyes to the ceiling. “We’ll roast the towns of the West in flames and choke the people with smoke. Even if one or two people wander out of the wilderness with a few photos, they’ll be buried in what we’ve done!”
“Yes! Yes!” Van Kamp squeaked. His fist pumped in the air and he precariously tottered atop his office chair.
Greenfield smiled. “Call the others.” Then, suddenly, he was gone.
Van Kamp gazed in the direction of the departed environmental leader. The room was quie
t, lacking the energy it had held just a moment before. A plate with a few crumbs and a crust of bread sat on the windowsill.
“Oh, shit.”
Chapter 27
Jason’s stomach rumbled again—a long, growling, whining eruption that seemed to evoke sympathy from above in the form of a simultaneous peal of thunder. He stopped in place amidst the long, boulder-strewn canyon floor, and clenched every muscle in his body in an effort to maintain control over his rebellious bowels.
To his right, Samantha also paused. Water dripped from her hair, which limply molded to her head and neck. She pressed her hand to her bare belly, grimaced, and met his eyes with her own.
Jason briefly lost himself in those eyes. He saw himself traveling through the woods with the owner of those eyes, exploring among the inner basin of the San Francisco peaks, grazing among the aspen …
Another rumble interrupted his train of thought. He took a long suck of water to calm his stomach, gulping down the cooling liquid.
“I don’t know,” Samantha said. “The water tastes funny—worse even than the iodine. I wonder if there’s something wrong with it.”
Jason shook his head and forced a smile.
“I think that’s just a little pond scum for flavoring. The iodine should take care of any critters.”
“That’s right,” added Terry, who had joined Jason, Ray and Samantha in stocking up on water at Kelsey Spring. He wore his rain jacket, though it remained unzipped in front in a sort of solidarity-in-discomfort with his colleagues. “Besides,” he added hopefully. “There hasn’t been enough time for anything in the spring to affect us.”
“So why do we all feel like shit?” grumbled Ray. He sucked at his water, started to spit it out, and then stopped and forcefully swallowed.
“Fuck. What’s done is done. Right?”
Nobody spoke.
“Right,” he answered his own question.
They continued in silence through the boulders, stretched out in a crude line from canyon wall to canyon wall. Free of stomach complaints, Rena and Bob walked ahead of the others. They gripped their rifles and eagerly looked for their prey.
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