13. Hadley #2
I bring the phone to my ear. The satellite signal takes a full three seconds to handshake, three seconds of dead static that feel like drowning.
Then a click. A gruff man, scratchy with sleep or whiskey or both.
"This is Dawes."
"Mr. Dawes, my name is Hadley Fence. I'm a civilian tourist. I've been with Banks Tanner since he found me yesterday he found me. He saved my life. Everything the police are saying about him is a lie."
Silence on the line. Heavy breathing. Then Dawes says, "Put Banks on."
"No." I surprise myself with how steady it comes out.
"You listen to me first. Three days ago I witnessed two armed men execute a third man near a frozen waterfall approximately six miles northeast of the Matanuska trailhead.
They threw a duffel bag into a crevasse.
They spotted me and opened fire. Banks found me in a cave hours later, responding to my offline beacon.
He has done nothing but protect me since. "
I can hear Dawes processing. Pen scratching paper.
Banks stands guard three feet away, rifle up, scanning the trees in slow methodical sweeps. He doesn't look at me. Doesn't need to. His body is angled so that he's between me and every possible approach vector. Even bleeding, even exhausted, he positions himself like a wall.
"Ms. Fence," Dawes says carefully. "I'm going to need specific coordinates and a detailed physical description of the men you saw."
"I can do better than that. Banks recovered a sat phone and a flight manifest from a helicopter that was tracking us."
Banks glances over. Nods once. He pulls a folded sheaf of papers from inside his jacket and hands them to me. They're stiff with cold, edges spotted with blood. I unfold them with clumsy fingers and the wind nearly rips the first page from my grip.
I flatten the manifest against my thigh and read.
Chartered aircraft. Registration number. Pilot name, some private contractor out of Fairbanks. Passenger manifests for seven dates over the past four months, each one listing the same three or four rotating names with no last names. Just call signs. VIPER. brOADAXE. KINGPIN. SLATE.
But the billing address.
The billing address for the charter account is a numbered LLC registered to a post office box in Juneau. And at the bottom of the invoice, in small bureaucratic print that the pilot probably never thought anyone would read, is the name of the LLC's registered agent.
I read it out loud.
"Pacific North Holdings, LLC. Registered agent, Kenneth Ridler."
Dawes goes quiet. A different kind of quiet than before. The loaded kind.
"Say that name again."
"Kenneth Ridler."
Banks's head turns sharply.
"Dawes," he says. Loud enough for the phone to pick up. "Senator Kenneth Ridler. Appropriations committee. He controls permitting for every mineral extraction operation in the interior."
"I know who he is, Banks. Everyone in this state knows who he is."
I flip to the next page. A route map. The helicopter's logged flight paths over the past four months overlay a topographic survey of the backcountry we've been running through.
Each flight terminates at the same grid coordinates, a site marked on the topo map as an abandoned federal claim.
Except someone has drawn new boundaries around it in red ink and written figures in the margins.
Tonnage. Ore grades. Dollar amounts that make my eyes blur.
Copper. Rare earth minerals. Lithium.
"Banks." I hold the manifest so he can see the numbers. "They're mining up here. Illegally. On protected federal land."
He takes the page. Studies it for three seconds. His expression doesn't change, but something shifts behind those gray eyes. The tactical calculus recalibrating. This isn't personal anymore. This is bigger than a witnessed murder and a cover-up.
"Dawes, the men at the waterfall weren't cleaning up a drug operation. They were eliminating a whistleblower who found the mine site. Ridler's running an illegal extraction operation on federal wilderness and he's using private military contractors to guard it."
"That's a sitting state senator, Banks. I can't just walk this into the trooper barracks."
"You won't have to." I jump back in. "I'm the witness. I saw the execution. I can describe both shooters. And this manifest ties the helicopter directly to Ridler's LLC. It's physical evidence."
More pen scratching. Dawes mutters something I can't catch.
"I need to make some calls," he says finally. "FBI field office in Anchorage. Someone outside the state chain of command. If Ridler has people inside the troopers, which frankly I'd bet my pension on, we need federal jurisdiction."
"How long?" Banks asks.
"Hours. Maybe a full day. I need you to stay off the grid and keep her alive."
"That's the plan."
"Banks." Dawes pauses. "You sound like hell. How bad?"
He doesn't answer. He reaches over and takes the phone from my hand and kills the connection. Just like that. Conversation over.
"He needs to know you're hurt."
"He needs to make calls. Not worry about me."
I open my mouth to argue and that's when I hear it.
Faint at first. A high, mechanical whine threading through the wind. It comes off the rock walls of the gorge, distorting direction, but it's getting louder. Fast.
Banks hears it the same instant I do. His whole body changes. Shoulders squaring, weight dropping into his knees, rifle swinging off his back and into his hands in one fluid motion.
A snowmobile engine. Screaming up the drainage at full throttle.
"The signal. They traced the sat frequency."
He grabs my arm and hauls me off the rock I'm sitting on. The manifest pages scatter in the wind and he snatches them with his free hand, stuffing them inside his jacket without breaking stride.
The engine noise splits into two distinct tracks. Then three. Coming from different angles, converging on the slope below us.
Banks shoves me at the cave opening and drops to one knee, shouldering the rifle, scanning downslope through the scope.
"Banks, how many?"
His finger moves to the trigger guard.
"Three machines. Lead riders got military posture and a long gun across his handlebars." He pauses. Adjusts the scope. "Ridler didn't send contractors this time. That's his top man. Recognized the build from the flight manifest photos."
The lead snowmobile crests the forest below us. Even from two hundred yards I can see the rider, broad-shouldered and precise, cutting a clean line through the powder straight toward our position.