Cold River Resurrection (23 page)

C
hapter
55

Smokey stood in the trail and talked to Nathan on his cell. He was surrounded by the ravages of the forest fire, amazed at the rejuvenation in just a few years. Grass and brush had returned. The burned trees were the reminder of the fire that burned for a month. The cliff was close. They were barely a hundred yards to the end of the burn.

“Where are you now?”

“About two miles behind you, coming fast,” Nathan said.

“We’ll wait at the cliff that we talked about, Big Brother. Don’t get lost out here in the big ol
d woods.”

“Just take care of yourself and Laurel and Jennifer until I get there. Like you said, you aren’t alone out here. Company somewhere.”

Smokey snapped the phone closed and looked at Jennifer. “You up for this?”

She nodded. “Let’s get it done and get out of here. I’ve had enough woods for one summer.”

“Yeah, Dad, we wanna go shopping. Move it, Dad.” Laurel had her arm around Jennifer’s waist.

“Deal,” Smokey said. He shook off the dread he had been feeling.

Just stay sharp.

He pulled the rifle off his shoulder and carried it in a combat
-ready position. He was as ready as he could be.

Roberto looked at the cop. They were close enough that he didn’t need the scope. It had been apparent for some time that the cop and the woman and girl were heading for the base of the cliff. 

Roberto and his
men were in a thicket of trees at the south end of the sheer rock face. He knew they were well hidden, but they had to be careful. He had heard what the cop could do. He turned to the man with the camera.

“Got the picture?”

He got a thumbs up.

The shooter covered the cop with one of the assault rifles.

When the cop arrived at the cliff, he was as good as dead.

Amy followed the path uphill, using brush and trees for cover at every opportunity. She knew that at this point, it didn’t matter which way she walked. She was probably in as much danger going this way as any other. She was not lost, not with all of Stan’s mapping devices, and she knew how to get off the mountain and out of the woods. She had food and water. She was going to find the killers. And she wished like she had never wished before that she had a real gun instead of the dart rifle.

It didn’t occur to her to run away, to put as much distance as she could from the killers. Her mom and friends always accused her of being stubborn, and with her mouth set in a firm thin line, she followed along the route the men took. She was scared, but determined. She had the beginning of a plan.

The path took her to the top of a sheer rock face, a cliff of over a hundred feet; this is the way the killers had gone.

When she got to the top, she lay on her stomach and looked out over the edge. The burn area stretched out below She saw movement down and to her right. There, in the trees. One of the killers lay behind a tree, looking through a rifle scope.

She saw more color in the burn area. A man approached, a man carrying a rifle. He looked familiar, and then she knew who he was. He was the cop who had talked to them about the lost hiker. And he has a woman and a little girl with him.

I need to warn them.

They’re walking right toward the killers.

Amy picked up her pack and began assembling the dart rifle.

It’s all I got.

And they killed my friend Stan.

Smokey walked out of the burn area
. The trees here were green and alive, untouched by the fire that had raged only a few yards away. The fire had burned up the canyon and left trees untouched on either side. Maybe the rock cliff had blocked the airflow.

“Smokey.” Jennifer came up behind him and stopped, putting her hand on his arm. He turned to look at her. She was watching the cliff.

“This where you were, where you found the hand?”

She pointed. “There, that split in the rocks, I was here before, I’m sure of it.”

He looked at the area where she pointed, and nodded. Laurel held Jennifer’s hand and stood on her tiptoes to see better. Smokey shrugged, pulled his rifle down, and walked up the trail through the trees to the cliff.

At least it’s cooler here, Laurel will like that.

In the burned area, they were in the direct sunlight. Here at the base of the cliff, sheltered by the trees, it was twenty degrees cooler.

A piece of color caught his eye and he stopped. A piece of cloth, caught on a rock at the base of the cliff.

The smell hit him then, the odor of decay, of rotten flesh. He took shallow breaths through his mouth. Smokey heard a noise and looked back to see Laurel holding her hand over her mouth, gagging.

The animals had made good work out of the body during the past week. This was the final resting place of Kal-leed’s girlfriend. Smokey revered the dead, no matter how they lived when they were walking the earth. A few scattered bits of cloth, part of a blouse. Metatarsal bones peeked out of the dirt, half buried. A shoe. A skull, cracked and chewed. A long bone, a femur, and part of the rib cage. What they had come for, the prize, the reason for all the killing, was there, at the base of the cliff. The
spilyay
and the
anahuy
had been here several times. Coyote and Mr. Bear. 

Battered.

No longer shiny.

A black metal briefcase.

It held the secrets to a drug empire, the connection to the terrorists and the cartels. I don’t have to open it to know that much.

“I was here,” Jennifer said. She pointed at the ground. “The woman was lying on her side, her hand missing, her . . . her head -.” Smokey glanced up at her and knew that she was back to that day, the day of discovery, the day she found a hand and renamed the horror her “Nanna.”

Smokey circled the dead.

Roberto pressed the spotting scope eyepiece to his cheek.

The briefcase.

Roberto kept his hand on the scope and turned his head. “You have a shot?” 

“Si, whenever you say.

“Shoot him, then let’s get down there quick, don’t want the woman to run off with the briefcase.”

Nathan looked down at the valley of dead trees. He had a mile to go, at least ten minutes with the trail the way it was, even humping fast. He heard the others come up behind him. Sarah. Burwell. Kincaid. Sergeant Lamebull. Chief Andrews. He knew they had to hurry. Bad things gonna happen.

The sound of a shot rolled across the valley. The direction of the shot was hard to pinpoint here in the rugged terrain, but he knew it was from a large caliber weapon.

That wasn’t Little Brother shooting.

We gotta go now.

But we’re gonna be too late.

He led them down the trail, as close to a run as he could make it, reckless, jumping where he could, not caring if the others could keep up.

Hold on.

Nathan had a sick feeling in his stomach as he ran. He held his rifle up high and mouthed an ancient prayer for his brother.

Smokey bent over and picked up the briefcase. As he turned to talk to Jennifer and Laurel something slammed into his shoulder, the sledgehammer blow spraying blood out against the rock face.

Shot. I’ve been shot. Ah, God, my baby girl.

Smokey flipped over on his back, hearing Laurel’s scream, and then everything went black.

“Daddy!” Laurel screamed and ran to h
im, crying, dropping her pack and throwing herself down on her knees beside him.

Oh, Dad, there’s a lot of blood, don’t die, you can’t leave me alone,
please Daddy, don’t die.

Jennifer dropped on her knees beside Laurel. She was surprisingly calm, now that it was her turn to be the one in charge, the one who would hold them all together. She didn’t know she could do such a thing until now. She pulled a shirt from her pack and pressed it directly on the wound in Smokey’s shoulder, blood spreading out under him. She pulled on his arm and got the shirt around and under him, pressing hard down, the blood slowing.

His eyes fluttered. He tried to talk.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. Jennifer bent over him as Laurel sobbed, holding her daddy’s hand.

“-care of Laurel,” he croaked.

“Don’t talk,” Jennifer said. She was vaguely aware of people coming up on them, footsteps, people speaking rapid Spanish sentences, then commands.

“Stand up
!”

She pressed on the t-shirt, remained over Smokey.

The man with the gun stood over her and screamed again.

“He’ll die,” Jennifer said.

She was pulled to her feet by her hair and whirled around and thrown down by a dark man, throwing her bloody hands out in front of her to break her fall. She caught a glance of another man with a video camera.

A video
? 

Jennifer shook her head and tried to get to her feet as Laurel threw herself on Smokey, and then the girl was tugging at the pistol in his belt holster, screaming.

“I’ll kill you, all of you!” Laurel pulled the gun free.

The dark man took a step and kicked Laurel
and the gun went flying.

“Don’t touch her!” Jennifer jumped up and was on the dark man. She swung at him, a glancing blow at his shoulder, and he slapped her down with an open hand. She fell beside Laurel, and for the first time, she knew that they would die here.  The man with the rifle stood over Smokey, and the dark man nodded. Jennifer pushed herself up and threw herself at the man with the gun.

Nathan came out of the burned area at a dead run. He stopped long enough to rest his rifle on a tree, willing his breathing to slow, still four hundred yards away, and put his scope on the scene at the base of the hill.

With his rifle scope at twelve power, the figures swept into focus, and he watched as Jennifer was smacked down, then Laurel. When the man stood over Little Brother, he knew that he had to take a shot.

Shoot well, Big Brother. Shoot straight.

He timed the movement of the barrel with his breathing, and took the shot.

Nathan began to run.

He knew he would be too late.

Amy held her hand over her mouth when
the cop was shot. She had flinched at the shot and watched in horror as the cop went down. His blood sprayed out on the rocks.

Must be his daughter, and the woman who was lost. What the hell are they doing here?

She watched as the men came out of the trees to her left, two of them with guns, one with a camera.

Stan’s camera.

The guys who killed Stan. She wriggled forward, pushed the tip of the dart gun over the edge of the cliff and waited for her chance. The man with the rifle stood over the cop and Amy knew then that she had to do something or the cop would be shot again. She lined up the air rifle and pulled the trigger. 

The man with the gun went down, and the woman went down on top of him. Got him.

What the hell?

Amy pulled the air rifle back and looked in wonder at the small gun.

Did I do that?

This air rifle didn’t do that. There, across the burn area. Movement. Someone coming. People running. Someone coming way too late, for my money. At least if they are the good guys I won’t have to walk out alone.
I can get someone to help me with Stan.

She slid back away from the edge and watched as the two men who killed Stan grabbed the woman and girl and ran them back up toward the trees, away from the cliff. One of them carried a briefcase.

She waited for the others to arrive, Indian cops from the look of them. When they got to the base of the hill they worked on the cop who was shot. Three of them ran up the hill after the woman and girl, their faces grim as they ran past.

Amy slid back and worked her way down the hill to meet them.

C
hapter
56

Mountain View Hospital

Madras

Smokey opened his eyes and tried to focus. Pain came over him in waves. The faces of his crew, Big Brother Nathan, Chief Andrews, and Sarah came to him. Nathan had blood on his shirt, as did Sarah. She looked as if she had been crying, clean streaks on her dirty face. She took his hand.

A doctor in a white coat loomed into view. New guy. Young.

“You’re lucky,” the ER doctor said. “A few inches one way or the other, you wouldn’t be here with us. The bullet didn’t hit a bone, we can patch this up.” He leaned over Smokey.

“Took some meat out of the trapezes. You’re headed for surgery, pull things together, you’ll be down a few weeks.”

Smokey shook his head. He couldn’t figure out what happened. Where he had been.

And where is Laurel? Jennifer?

Then i
t came back to him. He’d been shot. At the base of the cliff, Laurel and Jennifer had been with him. He had just found the briefcase and then was shot.

“Laurel,” he croaked. He looked around at the others. Sarah wouldn’t meet his gaze. He settled on Nathan.

“Big Brother. Tell me.”

Amy sat in the small waiting room, waiting to ask someone to help her with transportation to Albany. She had to figure out what to do next. From the looks of it, there wasn’t much public transportation in Madras. Maybe the Indians would help. She needed to figure out what to do with Stan’s remains. His body would be here in a funeral home they said.

She began pulling things out of Stan’s pack, thinking that she needed a shower. Shower first, and then food. That’s what I’ll do, she thought, get a ride to a motel, spend the night, and work on all of this in the morning.

The trip out of the hills had been fast. Four of them carried the cop, Smokey, out to a clearing, then loaded him on Air Life to the hospital. She had walked with two of them to the landing and they drove like wild people to town. She told them on the way about Stan, and about what she saw from the top of the cliff.

She pulled Stan’s
small laptop out and turned it on. It came up to the mapping program, and she watched as a red light moved slowly across the screen.

It wasn’t working right. She resisted the urge to smack the computer (it worked on her radio) and watched the blinking red light on the display of a map of Oregon. The light was showing in southern Oregon, almost to the Nevada border. But that couldn’t be.
There was another light showing on the reservation, somewhere near the cliff.

What the hell?

The second blinking light, according to the map, was now in Nevada, moving at a high rate of speed.

On a plane.

And then she knew.

Amy held the laptop in front of her like a hot serving dish, and ran for the emergency room, her ponytail bobbing up and down as she ran.

She heard yelling as she got there. The cops were holding Smokey down.

He was screaming.

It took her a while to get their attention.

When she had fired the dart, she explained, she hadn’t hit the man as she thought. He was in the morgue. Not moving.

She had hit the woman with her dart.

She could track her.

Anywhere in the world.

In the bedlam that followed, Smokey sat long enough to get taped up, the doctor at first refusing, then arguing until Smokey looked at him.

“I’m not signing you out,” the young doctor said, and then added, “
this will probably kill you, leaving the hospital.”

“Got some killing of my own to do, Doc,” Smokey said. There was going to be a lot of singing on the hill before this was over.

Gonna find my baby, and this good woman, Jennifer. And hell will visit those who took them.

He listened as Chief Martin Andrews gave orders.

“Get Weasel,” Chief Andrews said.