He locked the SUV with a flash of lights, and McKinney fell alongside as they walked back toward the truck stop.
CHAPTER 20
They drove for a couple of hours on Interstate 70, heading east toward Colorado. McKinney and Odin now wore U.S. Forest Service ranger uniforms replete with badges. The ravens paced about in a large wire cage that Odin had stored folded up in the cargo area. He had also stored food and water for them.
What little traffic there was on the highway consisted of isolated tractor-trailers. The landscape was as barren as anything McKinney had seen anywhere in her travels, a frozen and forlorn rock-scape with ice-capped mountains to the north.
Odin kept the police radio on, listening to the occasional Utah state trooper reporting status during traffic stops. They were seventy or more miles from the drone crash site now and had apparently escaped unnoticed.
Neither of them spoke. McKinney was too weary, and Odin seemed to be cogitating something. At some point she succumbed to exhaustion and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When she awoke they were still on the highway, which now wound along a river in brown hills patched with snow. She looked around in the afternoon light.
“Where are we?”
“Outside Grand Junction, Colorado. Eat something. No telling when you’ll get the next chance.”
She inspected one of the shrink-wrapped sandwiches and started tearing it open with her teeth. “Anything on the scanner?”
He shook his head. “Not about us.”
Before long they came down from the hills into the city of Grand Junction-a prosperous-looking oil town of mirrored glass buildings with a companion older downtown. But Odin blew through on the Interstate and headed out the far side. After a few minutes he took an exit onto a county road and headed into hills covered in snowy pines. The blue-white shadows of the Rockies were visible in the distance.
They passed only two other vehicles while traveling fifteen miles or so into steep forested hills. Odin slowed the SUV at the entrance to a rutted dirt road. There was a metal swing gate blocking it. He turned in and parked in front of it.
“We’re here?” McKinney looked around.
“Hop behind the wheel. I’ll open the gate.” Odin got out and put his Forest Service hat on with military precision.
McKinney did likewise with somewhat less precision. It felt odd playing the role of park ranger. She had never worn a uniform in her life, and she now realized how they caused you to adopt a persona. You could almost “feel” the role you were supposed to play. She imagined that was something authority had always known.
Instead of unlocking the gate, Odin was counting off paces to the right of it. About twenty feet down the road he stopped and flipped over a flat rock in the woods with his boot. With a cautious glance to make sure no cars were coming, he knelt and rooted in a hidden cache to come up with what looked to be a walkie-talkie and an automatic pistol in a sealed Ziploc bag. He returned to the SUV and emptied the bag’s contents onto the hood. He quickly slid the pistol into his Forest Service jacket.
McKinney noticed a packet of twenty-dollar bills, a U.S. passport, and several other items in the pile.
“You have stuff scattered all over the place.”
“When things go wrong, you’ll be shit out of luck if you haven’t prepared.” Odin then started keying numbers into the front of the radio. “Crypto codes-hang on.” Finished, he keyed the mic and looked up the road. “Safari-One-Six, Safari-One-Six. This is Odin. Do you copy?”
They stared at each other across the hood of the idling SUV, listening to radio static.
Then a squawking voice. “Odin, this is Safari-One-Six. I read you five-by-five. Sky is clear. Welcome home.”
Odin looked visibly relieved. “We’re coming in. Odin out.” He pocketed the radio. “Let’s get off the road.” He pulled a key out of the Ziploc bag as he approached the gate.
McKinney walked around and got behind the wheel of the SUV. Odin unlocked a thick padlock and pushed the gate in, motioning for her to drive through. He then relocked the gate behind them and got in on the passenger side, pushing the seat farther back with a thump. “We’ve a couple miles yet.”
McKinney brought them down a road winding along the bottom of a ravine, which then opened into a canyon that followed a frozen creek. There was patchy snow in the pine forest around them, but only occasional ice on the dirt road. They bumped along at twenty miles an hour for a while until McKinney came around a curve and suddenly saw a man materialize out of thin air alongside the road. It took her a moment to realize that it was a soldier in a camouflage suit, lowering what appeared to be a mirrored shield. The combination of the two had given him something approaching invisibility. The soldier carried a large white sniper rifle in the crook of his arm, and signaled her to halt with the other as they approached.
McKinney brought the SUV to a stop and looked to Odin.
“It’s us.” He got out, and she did likewise.
A Polaris ATV was already coming down the road ahead with another sniper on it, rifle strapped over his back. The first man had pulled back the mask on his ghillie suit to reveal Foxy, grinning as he pulled his long hair out of his face. He slapped Odin on the back. “Startin’ to worry about you guys.”
“Everyone accounted for?”
He nodded. “Now that you two have arrived. But there’s news too: Hoov says the mission’s over. Task Force Ancile is supposed to stand down and return to FB.”
“Stand down? On whose orders?”
The driver of the Polaris had stopped, engine idling, and pulled back his own ghillie suit hood to reveal Smokey. He nodded in greeting to McKinney.
Foxy shouldered his rifle. “Colonel sent word over JWICS. Says you’re to report when you get in.”
Odin exhaled as he contemplated this, sending a plume of vapor out over his beard.
Foxy looked dour. “They’re shooting us down in more ways than one.”
“We’re still on mission…” Odin headed back to the SUV.
“What? What do you mean?”
Odin marched toward the truck. “Let’s get to the house.”
Smokey and Foxy led the way on the Polaris, a mile or so down the dirt road where the ravine opened out to a small valley surrounded by wooded hills. The road forked, with the right branch descending toward the valley floor, but they followed the Polaris to the left, uphill to a big chalet built into the hillside and surrounded by sparse pine forest. The first-floor walls were of fieldstone, but stout logs formed the next two floors, with a pine-needle-covered slate roof and dormers rising above that. There was another Forest Service SUV parked near a closed garage door.
McKinney looked up through the windshield as she pulled to a stop.
Odin gestured as he got out. “Old FBI safe house. They used to debrief Russian and Cuban defectors here in the sixties and seventies.” Odin opened the cargo bay and grabbed the raven cage.
Smokey and Foxy had already pushed through the tall oak doors into the foyer of the old chalet. “Hoov!”
McKinney and Odin followed them into a musty three-story entry hall lined with mounted elk and deer heads, balcony railings, and a large staircase. There was a huge fireplace on the far wall, and although it was cold in the house, there was no fire lit. Stacked along the wall were a dozen or so green Pelican equipment cases.
McKinney then stared up at a large antler chandelier hanging on chains overhead. “This place is a vegan’s nightmare.”
“Who’s vegan?” Hoov entered the room from an interior door and nodded greetings.
Odin dispensed with pleasantries. “Get me an uplink to the colonel ASAP.”
“On it.” Hoov departed just as Ripper entered from a different doorway with Mooch. “Hey, Sarge.” She was now wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. “Is it true we’re standing down?”