I could see terror weave through every inch of him.
My own emotions shifted from puzzlement to horror when a massive silver-backed bear charged up out of the draw.
Butler ran even harder.
But the big male grizzly made up the ground between them with blinding speed. He lunged at Butler’s back and knocked him to his knees.
M’s man tried to scramble away, but the bear was on him now, cuffing him about the back and neck with his front paws and claws.
Even from that distance, even through the rain and the wind, I could hear Butler screaming as the bear flipped him over and went for his stomach.
Chapter 103
Washington, DC
Nana Mama lowered her head and said grace before Sunday dinner.
“Heavenly Father, we thank You for this meal and our family and our friends,” she said. “We are grateful for the lives and gifts You’ve given us and most of all for the love we have for each other and for You. We are blessed, Lord. Truly blessed.”
“Amen,” I said.
“Amen,” said Bree and the rest of our family, plus Sampson, Willow, and Ned Mahoney.
Bree squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. We’d been doing a lot of that since I’d come home from Montana.
Between what she’d gone through in Paris and what Sampson and I had endured in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, we were highly aware of the thin line between life and death and how arbitrary that line could sometimes be.
“Dad?” Ali said. “Did the biologists find the bear yet?”
“Not yet,” I said, stabbing a thigh from a roast chicken in mustard sauce from a platter.
Sampson said, “And I kind of hope they don’t.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Even if he’s a man-eater?” Ali asked.
“Even if he’s a man-eater.”
My grandmother put her knife down hard on her plate. “No more talk about man-eaters at Sunday dinner, please.”
We all shrank back a little. Hell hath no fury like Nana Mama when she thinks one of her meals is not being fully appreciated.
I looked at John, then her, and nodded sheepishly before digging in. As usual, the food was excellent, and we all fell silent as we ate except for a few moans brought on by the perfect tang in the mustard sauce and the sweetness of the saffron rice Nana had made to go with it. But I could not keep my thoughts from drifting back to the aftermath of our trip into the Montana wilderness.
After seeing the bear kill Butler and drag him back into the ravine, I signaled to Sampson to head for Durango’s raft a half a mile beyond it.
I made a long circle around the ravine to get to the raft myself. Along the way, I found a sniper rifle stashed by the trail along with two electric bikes and evidence of a third one missing. I marked the spot on my OnX map and left it all where I’d found it.
Sampson and I were off the river three hours later and hustling down the path to the trailhead to report what had happened. The first Flathead County Sheriff’s deputies were already on the scene when we finally got to the parking lot.
The family we’d seen run the rapids had already called to report the gunfire. We told the deputies to bring in the Montana Bureau of Investigations and the FBI and to be looking for a woman riding an electric bike coming off the trail system.
On our way to Kalispell to make formal statements, we called home to tell everyone we were safe and out of the woods two days early. Mahoney came out on the very next flight to oversee the investigation and the retrieval of the various bodies strewn along both sides of the river. The three of us went back in by helicopter the next morning. A larger team rode in on horseback.
The narco I’d left bound at the wrists walked right into them. He was suffering from dehydration and terrified of bears, and he was immediately taken into federal custody.
A group of U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigators came in later that day. Armed with high-powered rifles and dart guns, they’d gone into the ravine to retrieve Butler’s remains. They found what was left of him buried under a pile of dirt and rocks near another pile of dirt and rocks the grizzly had put over a rotting mule deer carcass. The Fish and Wildlife investigators believed the tracks I’d seen well south of the ravine belonged to the same bear on his way back to eat the mule deer, which he’d probably buried days before.
They also believed Butler had charged right into the draw where the grizzly was preparing to feast. The bear went territorial on him and attacked.
“Alex?” Nana Mama said.
I looked up at her. “Nana?”
“She asked you three times if you liked the meal,” Bree said.
“Shows how good it is,” I said.
“It’s so good,” Mahoney said.
“Best I’ve had in a long time,” Sampson said. “Right, Willow?”
His daughter nodded. “Can I have my dessert now?”
My grandmother smiled as she got up. “You can. Who else wants ice cream?”
Chapter 104
Afterward, Bree and I went out on the front porch with Sampson and Mahoney. The mid-September evening was beautiful — hardly any humidity in the warm air, and the sounds of the city were somehow soothing, familiar and forgiving in a way the wilderness sounds had not been.
“We have DNA matches on Butler, Vincente, and Dawkins,” Mahoney said.
“Let me guess,” Sampson said. “They’re all dead men.”
Ned nodded. “Matthew Riley Butler was a DIA interrogator, supposedly blown to bits in an IED explosion in Iraq six years ago. Jesus Pedro ‘JP’ Vincente was a Green Beret who purportedly died in a firefight in northern Afghanistan four years ago. David ‘Big DD’ Dawkins was with SEAL Team Four. He supposedly died five years ago by rocket-propelled grenade during a secret incursion into Somalia. His body was never recovered.”
“What about the helicopter they used?” Bree asked. “I heard they found it.”
Mahoney nodded. “In a clear-cut about twenty air miles from where they attacked you. Shot to hell. Used to belong to a helicopter service north of there. The owner claims it was bought sight unseen and paid for in cryptocurrency by Matthew Butler, whom he identified from pictures. We’re trying to track the crypto back to the buyer.”
I said, “I know who the buyer was. M. He’s behind all of it.”
“You believe what Butler told you before he ran?” Sampson asked. “That he had no idea who M actually was?”
“I go back and forth,” I said. “But it makes sense when I remember that he called what they were doing a ‘movement.’”
“Suggests an ideology,” Mahoney said. “Fanaticism.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “With independent cells acting without knowledge of others but all under Maestro’s and M’s direction.”
“I can see some of that,” Sampson said. “But from Manitoba?”
Mahoney said, “We had Canadian Mounted Police check out the location. Middle of nowhere, six miles from the nearest building.”
Bree frowned. “But you were saying there could be other teams like Butler’s? That M could send other teams like that after you? From wherever?”
I nodded unhappily. “Butler said M was sick of me and John. Butler said he disagreed with M, but that’s why he was there.”
Sampson said, “With M paying a half a million for a helicopter on short notice to make it happen, I’m thinking we’ve gone and pissed M off again. I’m thinking things are not over between us.”
I wanted to believe otherwise, but I said, “Not by a long shot, I’m afraid.”
Chapter 105
Northeastern Massachusetts