“And,” said Choir, “if those swine haven’t picked up the Hawkeye’s transmit to us, they won’t know. It’ll be one big surprise when we suddenly appear on top of ’em.” He turned to his beloved spaniel. “That right, boy?” Prince’s tail was wagging affectionately as Choir adjusted the Velcro tabs on the dog’s hagvar bulletproof, anti-shrapnel vest. Prince had easily passed the long, hard training for a tracker at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, but he had never liked the vest, for while it protected his body in the area between his head and hindquarters, it was heavy.
“Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves,” Freeman cautioned Choir. “These swine are clever dicks, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to pull off this attack. They’ve obviously been planning for it for a long time. I checked with the FBI and DHS guys and they say that Tenth Mountain Division has had no reports of theft visà-vis their Paratrooper mountain bikes or uniforms. That tells me,” added Freeman, his voice rising above the noise of the Chinook, “that these terrorists planned their op down to the last detail—” He paused, holding his left hand up for silence, his right hand gripping the roll bar as he listened to the beeper. Damn! It had ceased, which told him that his quarry might be in a “dead zone,” physical barriers blocking transmission, or—
“Maybe the terrorists know they’ve got a beeper,” cut in Johnny Lee.
“Well,” said Freeman, “the best we can do is keep our eyes and ears open.” His left hand indicated the southwest quadrant of his navigational pilotage chart. “We’ll land here, two miles west of this island, the last reported beeper contact. We’ll move in the bush along the west side of this old logging road that runs south-north parallel to the lake. We’ll follow Prince and our own noses but — and I can’t stress this too much — there are isolated cabins, not many, but some with a boat launch for hunters and fishermen. So remember, even if we get a beep right on top of one of them, identify before engaging. These scumbags — twelve of ’em by the bicycle count — may have commandeered a civilian vehicle to save travel time between Pend Oreille and Priest Lake. For them there’ll be no need to worry about identifying friend or foe. Everyone is now their foe, so they’ll be quick on the trigger. I’ll try to stay in contact with the Hawkeye and in whisper contact with you via your MIRs.” The general paused. “Questions?”
“We have any idea what they look like?” asked Salvini. “They could still be in U.S. battle dress.”
“They could,” the general agreed. “But my guess, Sal, is that they’ve gone civilian. The media will have the story out by now, or at least their version of it. Reporters can be sat on for a day, maybe, but there’s no way that the murder of ten American scientists and a security guard in a small community can be hushed up for much longer. So, Sal, my answer has to be that the creeps could still be in our battle dress uniform or hunting gear. But not many hunters use automatic weapons, which I presume they’re carrying.”
“True,” said Aussie, “though I know some so-called sportsmen who hunt deer with AK-47s and M-16s.” He shook his head in disgust.
During the remainder of the flight, Freeman and his team did a quick study of the list of cabins and of ten people who, the sheriff had told him, had fled civilization to live year-round by the now storm-caged lake.
Jake McCairn, sixty-five, had a bad back from too much stress, he thought, and had retreated from the world into his wild, primeval domain. He enjoyed not having to shave or wear his dentures. He liked animals more than people, and when he saw this army guy coming out of the forest at the edge of the lake and calling out, “Mornin’!” Jake ignored him and continued checking the float-lines he’d set for rainbow and Dolly Varden trout.
“You Jake?”
“Eh?” Jake checked another of the lines — nothing.
“You’re Jake McCairn, right?”
“What of it?”
“Signs on the way up from Sandpoint on Pend Oreille say you’ve got a boat for rent.”
“Sometimes. Why?”
“My name’s Ramon. My squad and I need a boat to go up the lake for a while.”
“Should’ve brought your own boat. What d’ya expect, big marinas with neons flashing?”
“We had a boat, a Zodiac, but it got ripped up by a bear or something up—”
Jake McCairn emitted a guttural cough that was a stand-in for a laugh. It could be heard by Ramon’s men thirty feet away in the woods fronting the lake. Low nimbostratus was coming lower, gray mist leaking from it and wreathing the lake in banks of bone-chilling fog.
“So,” said Ramon, producing a wad of fifty-dollar bills. “Could you let us use your boat for a bit?”
“Nope. Going out to the island soon. Gonna get me a wolf skin.” With that, Jake turned his back on the stranger and went back to his line casts.
Jake heard Ramon’s footfall behind him and turned to see about ten or twelve men approaching him from the marshy edge of the lake, and heard the unmistakable sound of an approaching helicopter. He looked up, could see nothing but gray cloud no more than five hundred feet above a gray sheen on the lake, a sign that the sun still existed and was trying to get through here and there.
Ramon grabbed him in a hammerlock, and now the other men were running across the marshy margin between the woods and lakeshore, McCairn protesting violently until one of the men punched him so hard McCairn could hear his jawbone crack.
“Now,” asked Ramon, dark brown eyes appearing almost black in the weak daylight, “where’s your fucking boat, before we break your—”
Jake tried to spit at them but only bloody dribble came out, running down onto his beard-stubbled chin.
“Break his leg,” ordered Ramon, glancing anxiously at the leaden sky for the helo.
Jake attempted to speak but couldn’t, the pain of his broken jaw so intense it came out as “Boa’s…up ’bou’ three hundred yar’.”
“Get him to his feet!” Ramon ordered. “Rashid!”
“Naam!”
“Speak English!” Ramon snapped. “You and Omar deal with the helo if it looks like it’s going to land.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“C’mon!” Ramon told Jake, jabbing him hard with a Heckler Koch 9 mm sidearm. “Take us to the boat and fast or we will break your leg.” He jabbed the old man again. “Think I’m kidding, Mr. McCairn?”
Jake stumbled along through the reeds and fist-sized rocks, and in his hurting fury managed to ask, “You ’mericans?”
The soldier ignored him. When they found the boat, two of Ramon’s men brought the outboard from their torn Zodiac. Then they cut his throat. They started the outboard, a gray wolf howled, and Ramon realized that the dead man’s boat could carry only six men.
There was no argument as to who would go and who would stay behind. Ramon’s commandos from GUPIX, the Government of Palestine in Exile as they called it, always knew that such difficult tactical situations might arise. The four of them, including the two American citizens from one of the vehement anti-federalist Idaho militias who had helped them in their mission against the U.S. government, had trained long and hard, and each man understood what he might be called upon to do in order that those with the disk could escape. And so morale remained high as Ramon told five of his men that he would go with them and the disk in the boat, while the other six men would stay behind.
The sound of the helicopter had now shifted from being eastward, near Montana, back toward them in the thick soup of nimbostratus. Ramon took comfort in the knowledge of how stressed the pilots must be. It would be tough enough on a clear day, flying in the tight airspace in the mist and cloud-shrouded amphitheater of the Rocky Mountains and surrounding hills, but this must be a nightmare. It was nothing like the Iraqi desert, Ramon mused, and he was struck by the sweet irony that in Iraq, in the desert, the terrain had favored the infidels’ infiltration, whereas here America’s rugged terrain helped by inhibiting a helo’s maneuvers.