Chapter 10
Bodies are heavy. Russ had forgotten it, the way one will sag and roll and pull toward the ground as if it knows where it belongs.
He had seen far more than his fair share, but he had lived in a world where there were medical examiners and evidence techs and gurneys and body bags, not a wilderness where you had to pack out a man’s beloved uncle like the trash from your camp.
They improvised a travois with deadfall branches, Knox’s scarf, and Russ’s outer shirt, but the scree and the close-grown trees meant they kept having to pick the rear up stretcher-style.
It took easily twice as long to retrace their steps to Pierre’s truck as it had to find his body, and by the time they reached the clearing, Russ’s back was screaming.
Pierre had had a warming blanket in the narrow backseat; they carefully wrapped him in it and placed him in the truck’s bed. There was a thermos of dead-cold herbal tea in the cab, as well as ibuprofen in the glove compartment, and Russ and Knox both popped a couple.
“We need to get the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Essex County Sheriff’s Department as soon as possible.” Russ handed the thermos to Knox.
“No.” She took a swig of icy tea. “I mean, yes, obviously, but we’ve got to try to find Flynn first. These people are killers, Chief. God knows what they’ll do if they find out he’s a cop.”
“Two or three law enforcement officers walking into their camp might give the game away.” Terrance accepted the thermos from Knox.
“I’m retired,” Russ said.
“Yes, you seem very retired.” The younger man looked at him skeptically. “Look, I agree with you. We need manpower, and lots of it. They killed an officer.” His voice was steady. “Every department and agency in the state is going to want to get these guys.”
“So let’s think about that.” Knox shoved her hands into her armpits. “We get rangers up here, and sheriff’s deputies and the state police and who knows what all—”
“Tribal police. Pierre was Akwesasronon. This is going to turn out half the force of Akwesasne, and probably the guys from Kahnawake, too.”
“Isn’t that in Canada? Let’s not get cross-border jurisdiction politics involved in a New York State crime.”
“That’s your border, Chief, not ours.”
“Guys.” Knox’s voice was sharp. “Can I possibly finish my sentence?”
Terrance looked abashed. “Sorry. Please go on.”
Knox took a breath. “You and I both commented on how the men who tried to search this truck weren’t trying to hide their tracks.
And that it might mean they weren’t planning on hanging around.
How long do you think it would take them to disappear if these woods are crawling with cops, most of whom will not be professional deerstalker types like you? ”
Terrance looked at Russ.
“They know these mountains, obviously,” she went on.
“We still don’t know where their vehicles are.
If they break camp and make it back to civilization before we get them, we won’t have Flynn, we won’t have the suspects, and we sure as hell won’t know what it is they’re doing that was worth killing a cop for. ”
Russ tilted his head. “She has a point.”
“Yes, I have a point. I’m not an idiot.” The fact that he and the ranger might be was left unspoken.
Terrance spread his hands. “I can’t just leave Pierre here.”
“You won’t have to. I think we should find the location of their camp. Then the chief and I fall back and stay there while you take your uncle’s body out and report to law enforcement. When you’ve got backup, we’ll be able to point them straight to the bad guys.”
“That’s a good plan, Knox.” Russ looked at the ranger. “If you blaze the trail back from their camp, you can find us. And if they move, we can follow and do the same thing. As long as at least one of us has them sited, they can’t disappear.”
“Unless they split up,” Terrance said.
“All we need is one. These fake soldier boys flip like a deck of cards when they’re faced with actual time.”
Russ knew Knox was committed when she shouldered her backpack without a word of complaint.
He had gotten an earful of her opinions on winter camping during their drive from Millers Kill, and her grim determination to find the militia and hunker down in the woods despite that spoke legions about her loyalty to her former partner.
He’d made a good call when he hired her.
She did the job differently than the men on the force, but she was real cop.
They had the rough coordinates of the camp—or depot—they’d spotted from the plane; the trick was going to be finding a trail to access it in a wilderness of dense woodland, steep rubble-sided eskers, and jutting outcroppings of stone ranging from tumbled boulders to sheer cliff faces.
Pierre’s uniform coat had been snagged and ripped on the back, suggesting his killers had dragged the body up the scree looking for a place to hide.
They decided to follow the natural trail down the dry creek bed, with a plan to double back and strike out from the place where the older ranger had been hidden if nothing panned out in the easier direction.
No chatting this time; they went as silently as possible, given the inevitable clatter of stones underfoot.
They were strung out at a distance from each other; Terrance taking the lead and Russ still bringing up the rear.
He kept ping-ponging from wishing they had more backup to acknowledging every extra person would have made them that much more likely to be seen or overheard.
It was midafternoon, but the sunlight passing through the trees was already low and slanted, with drifts of shadow gathering along the snow.
Sunset was at four these days, and in the mountains, it didn’t linger.
Russ had to rein in his urge to get the other two moving faster.
It was like deer hunting; you didn’t get your buck by hurrying.
Of course, he hunted at dawn, and walked out to an artery-seizing breakfast at a local diner before going home for the day.
He didn’t have to worry about setting up a winter camp with an inexperienced helper in the dark.
Up ahead, Terrance stopped and beckoned them forward. When Russ got there, the ranger pointed to where the creek bed curved downhill. He held up his compass. “We need to go uphill from here.” Knox’s groan was barely audible. Terrance looked at her, concerned. “Do you want to switch packs with me?”
“No. I carry my own weight. Literally, I guess.”
The eastern white pines rising above them were very mature, the ground cover low and creeping, with scarcely any thickets to impede hikers. “Looks like an easy passage.”
Terrance nodded. “It’s not an established trail, but it’s the way I’d go if I were moving around this part of the mountain.”
“Let’s switch lead.” Russ gestured toward his gear. “Heaviest pack first. Knox, you stay in the middle.” If she slipped, the ranger could catch her without bowling both of them ass over teakettle.
It wasn’t terribly steep, just tiring and slow.
The light shafted between the massive trunks, golden-orange and worrying.
Russ slogged upward, his boot steps silenced by the thick pine straw.
The copse ended at the summit of the slope in a lip of granite, and he surmounted it to find himself in a much younger swath of forest, shaggy hemlock and bare maple and alder trees rising over broom and prickle and drooping, winter-copper vines.
He waited until the others had clambered over the granite bluff, Knox panting hard and Terrance looking around cautiously. “Looks like a burn site,” he said.
“That was my thought. We’re either going to have to travel closer or start blazing a path, because we’re not going to be able to see for shit through this, especially with the light going.”
“Let’s mark the trail. Do you have a—” The ranger broke off as Russ retrieved his hunting knife from a side pocket.
Terrance pulled a Sharpie from his pocket and pushed up his sleeve. He had a series of numbers and letters scrawled onto his skin. “This is our way so far. How many steps and what direction. Let’s give you a copy, just in case.”
Russ gestured with his chin. “Put it on Knox. Also just in case.”
Knox shoved her parka and sleeve up. The ranger took her wrist and began writing. “Why on your arm?” She laughed. “Sorry, it tickles.”
“Can’t lose your arm if you drop your pack or fall in a stream, can you?” Terrance grinned up at her, his teeth gleaming white in the shadowy gloom. “Or if you do, you’ve got worse problems than being lost.”
She tugged her clothing back into place. “I don’t have a compass.”
“Relax.” Russ reset his strap so he could cut with his right hand without dislodging the rifle. “We’ll be together. And if for some reason we’re not, you can always use the sun or the stars to tell the direction.”
“The sun and the stars. Oh, that’s very helpful, Daniel Boone.”
They set off again, Russ leading, Knox and Terrance hanging behind a little.
The ranger was talking quietly; Russ made out “Polaris” and “stick compass” and figured Knox was getting a crash course in woodland survival.
He glanced back; the edge of the promontory was almost out of sight.
He reached up and peeled a couple inches of bark from the east and west sides of an alder, notched them to indicate the first blaze, and went on.
In this dead season, the undergrowth was more a visual screen than an impediment to hiking through.
He looked for any sign of human passage as he went eastward, but this was terrain that didn’t yield much, other than deer scat and rabbit pellets and, at one point, several wild turkey feathers where some bird had met his end.
He led his team of two deeper and deeper into the woods, marking the trail along the sight lines.
They were following the path of least resistance toward Terrance’s coordinates, but really, how accurate could the man have been when they were all flipped sideways and under fire?
He was starting to wish for the bear to show up again and lead them to their destination when his careful perusal of the ground paid off.
Not scat, or feathers, or even a boot print. A trip wire.
It stretched across two tree trunks about ankle-high off the frozen leaf litter. He followed the line around one trunk to see a simple homemade alarm: a clothespin screwed into the wood, connected to a circuit board small enough to have come out of a garage door opener.
He stood. The others had caught up with him. “It sends a radio signal, which means they’re close.”
Terrance shook his head. “You’re forgetting, anybody can get a signal booster these days. One of my friends flies drones; he’s got two that work off batteries.”
“Why would they have a trip wire right here?” Knox glanced around. “There’s no obvious trail.”
“There might be a perimeter line strung all along here, every few feet. If I had enough of these cheap rigs and the manpower, that’s how I’d do it.” Russ held out his hand. “Knox, take off your pack. You and Paul go in either direction and see if I’m right.”
The two split north and south, walking slowly through the brush, angled over to better scan the ground. Knox returned in five minutes, Terrance in six. “I found one. I was actually behind it.” Knox pointed in a northwesterly direction.
The ranger emerged from the brush and nodded.
“Yep. I had to look farther; mine was slightly south-southeast.” He dropped his pack and retrieved the topographic map of the area.
“If we assume it’s roughly circular, the center would be around here”—he pointed to an otherwise undistinguished spot—“which would be in the range of our coordinates.”
“Okay, let’s adjust our trail accordingly.
” Russ peeled two small strips off one of the trip-wire trees while the others redonned their backpacks.
They all stepped gingerly over the wire, and struck out toward the northeast. Now, Russ had no problem keeping the pace slow, despite the gathering late-afternoon shadows.
The last thing he wanted was to stumble onto the militia unawares.
He continued stripping markers in bark as they went deeper into the wilderness.
They were traversing a till plain, the relatively flat and rock-strewn remains of a glacier’s passage, so the hiking was fairly easy, despite the brittle gorse and bramble and the several half-frozen streams they had to navigate.
It was the ease that worried him the most—if he were pitching camp, he’d do it in an area like this.
Finally, he called a halt to check their location against the coordinates.
They gathered together while Terrance pulled out the map and spread it on the ground.
Russ envied the younger two their ability to squat; he had to settle for going down on one knee.
The ranger traced their path so far. “We’re getting close, Chief. ”
Russ’s doubts about the coordinates were gone.
Between the trip wire and the terrain, this felt right.
“This is what I want to do.” He leveraged himself up and shrugged off his backpack.
“I’m going to reconnoiter ahead. It’ll be easier for one of us to creep up on them. You two are going to stay here.”
Terrance stood. “This is my jurisdiction.”
“Yes. And if it comes time for an official response, you’ll need to lead it.” Russ pulled his binoculars from a pocket and reslung his rifle. “Which is why you need to sit out the scouting trip. If something goes wrong, we need someone with the authority to act.”
Terrance blew out a breath before nodding. “We’ll wait an hour. If you’re not back by then, we’re coming after you.”