After leaving the truck, they walked now for about an hour, mov- ing like shadows in the silence of the tall trees, until Nighthawk stopped and raised his hand. He froze in place, eyes half-closed, mov- ing his head slightly back and forth like a radar antenna focusing on an incoming target. He seemed to have forsaken the ordinary senses of sight and hearing and was using some inner direction-finder.
As Green watched, fascinated, he thought, You can take the In- dian out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the Indian. At last, Nighthawk relaxed, reached into his pack and unscrewed a canteen. He handed it to Green.
"I hate to be a pest," Green said, taking a swig of warm water, "but
how much farther do we have to walk?" Nighthawk pointed toward the line of trees. "About a hundred yards that way is a hunter's trail that will take us to the lake."
"How do you know?" Ben tapped his nose. "No big deal. I've been following the water smell. Try it."
After a sniff or two, Green found to his surprise that he could pick up the faint scent of rotting vegetation and fish mixed with the fragrance of pine. Nighthawk took some water and tucked the can- teen back into his pack. Lowering his voice, he said, "We'll have to be very careful from here on in. I'll communicate with hand signals."
Green gave him the okay sign, and they set off again. Almost im- mediately, the scenery began to change. The trees grew shorter and slimmer as the soil under their feet became sandier. The under- growth thickened, and they had to push their way through thorns that ripped at their clothes.
Shafts of light streamed in from breaks in the trees overhead.
Then, quite suddenly, they could see the sparkle of water. At a sig- nal from Nighthawk, they got down on their hands and knees and made their way to the edge of the lake.
After a moment, Nighthawk stood and walked to the water's edge, with Green following. An elderly Cessna floatplane was tied up at a rickety dock. Nighthawk inspected the plane, finding nothing out of
place. He removed the cowling and gasped when he saw the engine. "Josh, look at this!"
Green peered at the engine. "Looks like someone took an ax to it." The hoses and connections hung loose where they had been cut.
The engine was scarred in a dozen places where it had been hit with something hard.
"This is why no one could fly out of here," Nighthawk said. He pointed to a foot-worn trail that led away from the floatplane dock. "That path leads to the village."
Within minutes, they were making their way to the edge of a clearing. Nighthawk held out his hand for them to stop. Then he squatted on his haunches and peered with sharp eyes through the bushes. "There's no one here," he said finally.
"Are you sure?"
"Unfortunately, yes," Nighthawk said. He walked unafraid into the open, with Green hesitantly taking up the rear.
The village consisted of a dozen or so sturdy-looking log houses, most with porches. They were built on both sides of a swath of packed-down dirt in a rough approximation of a small town's Main Street, complete with one structure that had a general-store sign on it. Green expected someone to burst out the front door at any mo- ment, but the store and every other house in the village were as still as tombs.
"This is my house, where my parents and my sister lived," Nighthawk said, stopping in front of one of the larger structures.
He went up on the porch and went inside. After a few minutes, he came out, shaking his head. "No one. Everything is in place. Like they just stepped out for a minute."
"I poked my head in a couple of the other places," Green said.
"Same thing. How many people lived here?"
"Forty or so."
"Where could they have gone?"
Nighthawk walked to the edge of the lake a few yards away. He
stood, listening to the quiet lap of the waves. After a moment, he pointed to the opposite shore and said, "Maybe over there?" Green squinted across the lake. "How can you be sure?" "My mother wrote that there was funny stuff going on across the lake. We've got to check it out."
"What kind of funny stuff?" "She said big helicopters were coming in and unloading material
night and day. When the village men went over to investigate, they were run off by guards. Then one day, some guys with guns came over to the village and looked around. They didn't hurt anyone, but my mother figured they'd be back."
"Wouldn't it be better to go tell the authorities? They could send someone in by plane."
"I don't think there's time," Nighthawk said. "Her letter is more than two weeks old. Besides, I can feel danger and death in the air." Green shuddered. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and the only person who could get him out was raving like a medicine man in a B movie.
Sensing his friend's nervousness, Nighthawk smiled and said,
'Don't worry, I'm not going native. That's a good suggestion about the cops. I'd feel better if we checked things out first. C'mon," he said, and they headed back to the knoll they had climbed a few minutes before. They came to a natural overhang of rock. Nighthawk pulled away some branches that covered the opening. Lying upside-down on a crude rack was a birch-bark canoe. Nighthawk ran his hand lov- ingly over the shiny surface.
"I made this myself. Used only traditional materials and tech- niques."
"It's beautiful," Green said. "Straight out of Last of the Mohicans." Better. I've gone all over the lake in it."
They dragged the canoe to the beach, dined on beef jerky and rested as they waited for the sun to go down.
With the approach of dusk, they threw their packs into the canoe, pushed it into the water and started paddling. Night had fallen by the time they drew close to the shore. They had to stop when the canoe hit something solid in the water.
Nighthawk reached down, thinking they had hit a rock. "It's some kind of metal cage. Like a bait box." He scanned the water with his sharp eyes. "The water is filled with them. I smell fish, lots of them. It must be some sort of hatchery operation."
They found a breach in the floating barricade and pointed the canoe toward land. Something stirred and splashed in the metal cages, confirming Nighthawk's theory of a fish hatchery. Eventually they came to the outer end of a floating dock lit by dim ankle-high lights they had seen from the water. Tied up to a series of finger piers were several Jet Skis and powerboats. Next to the smaller watercraft was a large catamaran. It had a conveyor belt running down the middle, and Nighthawk guessed that it was used in the hatchery operation.
"I've got an idea," Green said. Working systematically, he pulled the ignition keys from the Jet Skis and the boats and threw them into the water. Then they tucked the canoe in between the other craft, covered it with a borrowed tarp and climbed onto the pier.
Where the dock joined the shore, it continued as a blacktop walk- way that led inland. Nighthawk and Green decided to keep to the woods. After walking a few minutes, they encountered a wide dirt track, as if a big bulldozer had plowed its way through the forest. They followed the swath and came up on a row of trucks and earth- moving machinery arranged in neat rows behind a huge storage building. Using the shed as a shield, they peered around the corner and saw that they were at the edge of an open area carved out of the woods. It was brightly illuminated by a ring of portable halogen lights. Mechanized shovels were flattening down the dirt, and great road-building machines were laying down swathes of blacktop. Work crews armed with shovels were smoothing out the hot asphalt in preparation for it to be flattened down by the steamrollers.