Snow Blind

by Jim Heskett

  They hiked for an hour until midnight rapidly approached. When they reached a vast, open plain, Layne and Harry paused at the edge of some trees as a half dozen armed men streamed through at the other end, keeping a low profile. Rifles raised.

  Their path was pointing them away from Layne and Harry, though. No need for confrontation.

  They didn't have to speak about it. He knew the assassins were headed toward the cabin. When they arrived and found Janine in a puddle of blood, who knew what that might do to their plans.

  Layne noted one strange detail. The hostiles were not wearing white jackets. They didn’t have any sort of uniform, this time.

  Same crew? They’d been too far away to tell for sure.

  A little after midnight, Layne became too tired to push on any further. They'd been slogging their way up the mountainside, the peaks growing more treacherous and more craggy. Even with the snowshoes he'd taken from the cabin, the going still proved slow and difficult. They didn't find a cave, but Layne did reach a rock outcropping that would provide relief from the weather if it began to snow again.

  Still about a half hour south of the SMRC, this was as close as Layne dared to go. He unfurled the two emergency blankets he'd taken that morning, and he and Harry settled down for the night.

  Layne wasn't exactly sure what he would do tomorrow, but he knew he had to get back to the SMRC. And, just as he was about to fall asleep, his phone rang.

  41

  Just after midnight, Serena welcomed the young agent into the FBI office they’d arranged for her, and he set a steaming cup of coffee down at the edge of the desk. She gave him a dip of the head as thanks, and he offered a sheepish smile in return.

  “Third shift is usually so boring,” he said. “It’s nice to have a visitor to spice things up.”

  “I won’t be much longer.”

  His grin faded, a fraction at a time until it became a flat expression. Not quite a frown. “Gotcha. If you need anything else, please let us know. We’re all just out here, hanging out, waiting for something interesting to happen.”

  He then backed out of the room. She wondered why he’d seemed afraid of her. Had she been standoffish? She did have to admit that in her few short years of service to Daphne's team, she’d displayed some antagonism toward other government agencies. Maybe she scowled too much. Maybe she was too quick to drop a flippant word.

  Oh well. It’s not as if she would ever see Coffee Agent or any of these other people again.

  She checked the time and picked up her phone once more, to try him one final time for the evening. As she typed in the routing phone number to mask the call, she sighed. Her hopes were not high for something to magically work this time.

  But, the call went through.

  "Hello?" Layne said, after only the second ring.

  Something about his voice sent a shudder through her. She hadn’t expected him to pick up the phone. For a moment, she stumbled over her words and couldn’t remember the code name assigned to him for the operation. "Layne?"

  "Serena?"

  "Yes," she said, "it's me.”

  “This line secure?”

  “It is. Are you okay?”

  Layne grumbled a little on the other end of the line. "Yeah, me and Harry are okay. Still breathing, at least.”

  “I've been trying to reach you for days."

  “I’m not surprised. Reception has been in and out here on the mountain. I don’t understand how I even have service right now."

  “Roger that. How is it going up there?"

  "It's a real shit-show,” Layne said. "Everything descended into chaos. There was an attack, and everyone at the retreat center is dead."

  Serena bit her lip as she processed this information. She then proceeded to tell Layne about everything she'd been doing over the last week in Seattle. The card game, eavesdropping on the conversation at the diner, her espionage in the bank, uncovering the names Victoria Overton and Zinan Watanabe.

  “I don’t know anything about this Z person,” Layne said, “but Victoria has been pulling the strings from the start. We have information about trafficking movement happening tomorrow, but it’s all too vague. Harry and I are planning a return to the SMRC in the morning to see if there’s anything we missed.” He paused and a few seconds of dead air followed. “This is going to sound morbid, but with everyone dead, we’ll have full access to the facility.”

  “No, I get it. It makes sense. What do you need from me? I have research capabilities here. I’m trying to get more on Victoria, but it’s been tricky.”

  “Victoria is dead. An assassin snuck onto campus and cut her down in front of me. He had a chance to take me out, too, but he didn’t. I don’t know if something interrupted him, or he panicked and fled, or what happened.”

  Serena sipped her coffee, letting the steam waft over her face. “That’s odd.”

  “I agree. You think this Z person is responsible for Victoria’s death?”

  This possibility intrigued Serena. She knew Z and Victoria had endured a falling out, but Zinan sending a team of assassins to murder her and everyone at the retreat center because of that seemed a little too extreme.

  Out in the cubicle farm, the young agent was browsing Facebook and rolling a quarter back and forth across his knuckles. He pivoted his head toward her and gave her a wink.

  “Maybe he’s responsible,” Serena said, “but I have nothing on him other than a name, at this point. I don’t know much more than you do.”

  “Flying blind,” Layne said with a grunt. “Just like we always have been.”

  “I’m going to head up there as soon as possible.”

  "There's a cabin to the south of the retreat center, a few miles away. I think the roads up to that point might be manageable.”

  “I can manage that. I have access to a truck with snow tires.”

  “Good. When you get there, take extra care, because the area might be compromised.”

  “Is there open road to the SMRC from the cabin?”

  “No, but I thought of that. In that cabin, there's a cup on the mantelpiece. Inside it are keys to snowmobiles in a shed outside. Use a snowmobile to meet us at the retreat center tomorrow morning. I'll send you the coordinates of the cabin."

  “Understood," she said.

  "It'll be good to see you again."

  Layne ended the call, and Serena pulled the phone away from her ear. She frowned at it.

  42

  Layne awoke with a crunchy layer of ice in his facial hair. He didn’t have enough to call it a beard since it had only been a few days since he’d shaved. Plus, he was never great at cultivating the face scruff. It grew in blond, so he had to work at it for a while before anything took hold.

  He shifted onto his side, the emergency blanket crinkling as he did so. For a brief second, he’d forgotten he was sleeping outside in the mountains of British Columbia. The frigid air brought back all of those memories in a rush.

  Next to him, Harry stirred at the sound. His eyes fluttered.

  “Morning,” Layne said.

  “I see we survived the night,” Harry said, yawning and pulling the emergency blanket up around his neck.

  “Apparently so.”

  Layne sat up and stretched as he checked the collection of armaments he’d kept inside the emergency blanket with him.

  “You still a gamer?” Harry asked.

  Layne shrugged. “A little. Not nearly as much since Cameron was born. And I don’t do any of the online stuff because I don’t enjoy being called a noob by a bunch of fifteen-year-olds.”

  Harry chuckled. “Yeah. That’s one hazard.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “This feels like we’re about to go up against the end boss, but we’re way under-leveled.”

  Layne slid a magazine into a pistol. “That’s being a little dramatic. You came back too, you know. You signed up for this.”

  “I know, I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I mean, I know what this is for
you. I know this is about the warehouse and the alley and the dance club, six years ago.”

  Layne tensed at the mention of London, and he considered his words before responding. “This is about stopping people from doing a terrible thing. This is about kids in a shipping container. That’s all.”

  “When I first took a government job,” Harry said, eying the Beretta in Layne’s hand, “my wife was concerned about my safety. You know, when I was doing in-the-field stuff. I had her pretty-well convinced that the most dangerous thing I did was running the risk of not getting reimbursed if I couldn’t get the gas receipts in on time.”

  Layne grinned. “That’s no joke. I remember having to swallow a few expenses because I lost the receipts.”

  “Coming back to Daphne’s team, I knew this might be part of it. I knew it wouldn’t only be remote operational support.”

  Layne chewed on his lower lip, studying Harry’s pained expression. “No one will think any less of you if you want to go back to your desk job. You do have a family to think about.”

  “So do you. The difference is, I had my family back then, and you didn’t.”

  “Yes, that’s valid.”

  “I get it,” Harry said. “It’s not just London.”

  Layne pictured his daughter, sleeping on her stomach, her little back rising and falling with each breath. “It’s not.”

  Harry scurried out of the blanket, shuddered, and opened a granola bar. He tried to take a bite, but the thing was rock hard. He gnawed a bit at one edge, then gave up after a few seconds. “I assume we’re going back into the belly of the beast as soon as possible?”

  Layne nodded. “There’s no other way.”

  “Then if it has to be done, it has to be done.”

  “Copy that.” Layne’s head tilted when the sound of something nearby caught his attention. A twig snapping or a similar sound. He held a finger to his lips to silence Harry, and then he backed out of the emergency blanket. Still wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and long underwear, he pulled on his boots.

  He pointed the pistol up and crept to the edge of the overhanging rock that had been their shelter the night before.

  Layne leaned around the boulder, pistol out. Nothing there. He pressed forward, circling around the boulder until he was on the other side. And then, he saw it. Two hundred feet away, a lone wolf stood in the snow, breath steaming. Yellow-brown eyes focused on Layne.

  “Go on,” Layne whispered. “Not today. Go back to where you came from.”

  It leered at him for a moment and then padded away in the opposite direction. Layne waited a few more seconds, studying the area for others, and eventually felt satisfied. Odd that he hadn’t smelled the wolves as he did before. Then, he noted the lack of wind. The weather seemed to have taken a positive turn, finally.

  “It’s nothing,” Layne called out. “Coming back.”

  He shuffled over to Harry and sat on top of the emergency blanket, triggering a round of crinkles. He set the pistol back down on the snow in front of him and rolled his shoulders a few times.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Harry said. “You’re in your underwear.”

  Layne shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to the humidity. Doesn’t bother me anymore. Anyway, I don’t feel as cold this morning, for some reason.”

  Harry looked up at the sky, with no snow and a spread of clouds that looked much thinner than the last few days. “Looks like it’s clearing up.

  “Agreed. This is good.”

  Harry dipped his head. “That reminds me, I have bad news. I realized it after we left yesterday, but didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Okay. What is it?”

  “I forgot to grab the sunglasses. I mean, it should be fine, as long as it stays cloudy.”

  Layne paused to consider the implications. He squinted skyward, studying the thin clouds. “It’s okay, man. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Do you have better cell reception, though?”

  Layne checked his phone, and he did indeed have reception. He also had a text message from Serena, which indicated she was in Squamish and would be on the mountain soon. He replied with the location of the SMRC and the general plan.

  “What about Control?” Harry asked.

  “I talked to her last night.”

  “You did?”

  Layne nodded. “After you were asleep. I asked Daphne to send in an assault team and a whole slew of drones, and she was not enthused about the idea. Roads bad, cloudy, poor weather for flying.”

  Harry pointed overhead at the calm sky.

  “I know,” Layne said, “now it’s clear enough for drones. But I’m not going to ask her again. There’s no time. I think we’re on our own, for the time being. It’s not ideal, but it’s what we have, and we can deal with it.”

  “Understood. So, the shipment happens today on some island we still don’t know about. What’s the plan?”

  “There’s a piece of the puzzle missing. Something back at the SMRC we didn’t see before. So, we hike back, and if the soldiers are there, we sit tight from a good distance and wait for an opportunity. Capture one of them if we can. You can wait beyond the campus for me. And, if they’re gone, we scour the campus to find something we missed. Serena said she would be inbound so you can be her welcoming party.”

  “This feels wrong,” Harry said. “Like we’re going to hike back there, but not all of us are going to come away together.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not. Either way, we’re not getting any younger, sitting here.” Layne stood up. “Let’s go, Boukadakis. It’s time we finally learn what the hell is going on here.”

  43

  Layne and Harry paused beyond the tennis courts, a couple of thousand feet from the edge of the SMRC, to check the situation. With the sun now beaming relentlessly overhead and neither of them wearing sunglasses, the blinding snow all around them made seeing anything difficult. Even blinking hurt. Layne had cut strips of the emergency blankets to wear over their faces with tiny slits poked out for eyeholes, but it was still nearly impossible to see.

  After pausing to let his eyes adjust as best he could, Layne pointed toward the road leading out from campus. “I see only one snowcat.”

  “That’s better odds, but still not great. How many were here yesterday?”

  “Three. This must be the cleanup crew, tidying things up, so they sent the other two back.” Then, he squinted. “Wait a second. That’s not one of the same snowcats.”

  “They sent a different one? Why would they do that?”

  Layne chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds. “I have no idea. Maybe it was a fourth we didn’t see, or it arrived later? This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Now he swept his eyes across the campus and noted the bodies of the white-jacketed assassins were strewn about everywhere. The assassins who had assaulted the campus were all dead on the ground, most of them in scattered puddles of red. The living guys wandering around to clean up were not in white jackets. These armed men didn’t have any standard dress code.

  “This is interesting,” Layne said. “These aren't the same guys. This crew took out the assassins from yesterday.”

  “I don’t understand. Who are these guys if they’re different from the ones who arrived yesterday?”

  Layne grumbled. “No idea. But, it doesn’t change what we have to do.”

  Harry said nothing and Layne followed his eyes to a patch of snow, darkened red with the blood of the hippie teacher from the SMRC. Not two feet away, one of the white jacket assassins had fallen next to her, now sprawled out. Stripped of his weapon. One of the new crew of assassins came and dragged away the white jacket man, but left the retreat teacher in place.

  They were staging a scene, but for what, Layne didn’t know.

  “All the blood,” Harry said. “It’s so much blood.”

  “They’re not going to get away with this.”

  Harry’s lip quivered. “Should we have stayed and fought?”

  Layne pivoted towar
d him and touched his shoulder to break the hacker’s concentration. “No. You were right. We didn’t stand a chance against them, and they would have cut us down in a heartbeat if we’d stayed. Tactical retreat was our only option.”

  In his pocket, Layne’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out to see a text message from Serena.

  Inbound to SMRC via snowmobile. ETA ten minutes.

  Layne noted his phone’s battery was nearing the red as he wrote back:

  Negative. Hostiles still on site. Kill engine before you reach the hill. Harry will meet you at the edge of the clearing to the southeast.

  He directed Harry where to go and then trudged toward the campus. As he approached, he crept to the edge of a bungalow and tried to form a solid count of the number of soldiers present. There was one near the snowcat, clearing icicles off the treads and wiping snow from the windows. It looked like they were preparing to leave.

  One or two others were wandering around, entering various bungalows and picking up random things from the ground. A couple going in and out of the lodge. With Layne’s snow-blindness, he had a difficult time keeping track of the total count. He wished he could sneak back into his bungalow and retrieve his sunglasses, which had gone unused since the day he’d arrived.

  Also, Harry’s computer, Layne’s phone charger and extra clothes. But, he couldn’t risk it.

  Instead, he waited, observing the soldiers. A few of them kept entering and leaving the main lodge. Aside from the outdoor activity, this one building seemed to be where they were concentrating their efforts. With his curiosity piqued, Layne waited for a break in the action to sneak over to the main lodge so he could enter via the back door.

  The rear of the lodge wasn’t locked, so Layne had no trouble accessing the inside. He halted in the darkness of a back room, listening. The heat didn’t seem to work, and his breath fogged out from his lips. Almost as cold in here as it was outside. Maybe some of the windows had been shot out, or maybe they were leaving doors open as part of the strategy, whatever that was.