Exile Hunter (31 page)

“Prisoners! Listen
up! I have a proposition for any of you who want to earn some extra
rations. A survey team has failed to return to Logging Site D from
their remote site. Sergeant Rivera here needs some volunteers to go
out and retrieve them. We need men who’ve worked the logging sites
before and know their way around. Who’s interested in two days’
extra rations?”

Though two day’s
rations represented a fortune to men at the edge of starvation, no
one spoke or raised a hand. Snow was falling so hard now that Linder
had difficulty discerning the outline of Holzer’s body only a few
steps away. Nearly a foot of snow had fallen since the blizzard
started. To go out in search of the missing survey team would be
onerous work, even for a trained search-and-rescue team. For someone
beyond the point of exhaustion, it was next to suicidal.

“Really?” Holzer
taunted. “I’m surprised at you. Don’t you men have any
compassion at all for fellow human beings in distress?”

No answer.

“Not even for your
fellow prisoners? I’m told that one of your team leaders, Charlie
Yost, is among the missing. Any friends of Yost among you?”

Still no response.
Holzer and Rivera put their heads together to confer. Holzer tried
again.

“Okay, I’ll raise
the stakes. Two days’ rations and two days off your time at the
Point. Who’s in?”

“Why us?” a voice
shot out from the back. It was the Giant, a towering former Special
Forces sergeant, reputed to be indestructible, and known to be a
thorn in the camp administration’s side. “Why not send the
loggers?”

“Because we’re
closer to the survey site,” Holzer responded. “And because,
unlike you, the loggers produce something of value and might be
missed. So I ask again, who wants to earn two days’ extra rations
and a reduction in sentence?”

“We’d need a
guarantee on the extra rations; we should get them whether we find
the surveyors or not,” the Giant countered. “And if we bring any
of them back alive, we want a week of double rations and two days in
sick bay to recover. If that’s the deal, I’m in,” the Giant
declared.

Rhee’s voice chimed
in next. “Count me in, too.”

Linder was amazed to
see Rhee raise his hand, having presumed him dead earlier in the
week. But it was just like Rhee to do something as crazy as this. It
brought joy to Linder’s heart to see the young Korean miraculously
brought back to life, even though Rhee probably still hated him. He
wondered if Rhee knew that Linder had tried to revive him. And had
the chest compressions truly restarted his heart, or had he simply
failed to detect Rhee’s faint pulse? Linder longed to ask Rhee in
person if the latter would be willing to speak to him.

“Okay, I’ll meet
those terms,” Holzer answered the Giant. “But not for you and
Rhee. You’re disqualified because you’ve both attempted escape
before. Now, who else wants to accept the new offer?”

Rhee and the Giant
looked back at Holzer in mute fury.

“I’ll go,” Linder
said, raising his hand and stepping forward. Though he acted on
impulse, a similar decision had been taking shape in his mind for
days as a kind of compromise between the fear of losing his humanity
and his scruples against suicide. The choice seemed acceptable
because, while his chances of surviving the rescue were slim, they
were not so small that the mission represented wanton
self-destruction. Thus, to risk his life to save another would not be
an affront to life but an affirmation of it, a sort of grand gamble.

While Holzer recorded
Linder’s name, another volunteer’s hand shot up, then two more
from a pair of young ex-soldiers, and another two from middle-aged
men whom Linder had noticed praying together over their food at
lunch.

In less than a minute,
Holzer had recruited six men to accompany Rivera, a second dog
handler and two riflemen on the mission. When the volunteers’ names
were recorded, Holzer briefed the men about the missing survey team,
their last known location, and their expected route back to the
logging site.

Sergeant Rivera then
distributed a fresh battery-powered headlamp to each man, handed each
a half dozen meal bars, and poured each a fresh mug of coffee before
leading them along a forest path with his mixed-breed husky blazing
the trail. Linder went next, followed by the other prisoners and the
riflemen, while the second dog handler, Corporal Gallo, brought up
the rear. Each man was careful to follow the fixed guide rope
stretched along the right side of the path in case he lost sight of
the man ahead. When they reached the logging road, Rivera’s dog
rooted around in the snow and soon picked up the scent of the survey
team, although the falling snow had obliterated their day-old tracks.

“Should we rope in?”
one of the younger prisoners asked Rivera.

“Not feasible. Just
stick close together. If anybody gets separated, stay put, and the
dogs will find you. Now let’s get going.”

Rivera’s husky leaped
forward and the team trudged on through snow that was a foot deep and
growing deeper by the minute. Before long, Linder found it impossible
to keep up with Rivera and the dog, who were now barely visible as
dark blurs behind a curtain of white. One by one, the other prisoners
and the riflemen passed him, except for Gallo and his dog, whom he
presumed were still behind him. Although Logging Site D was close to
where Linder had felled timber for the new barracks, he no longer
recognized the landscape.

Linder called out for
the others to stop and wait but heard no reply. The blizzard
swallowed up sound so completely that he doubted his voice could be
heard more than ten meters away. There was nothing else to do but
keep moving in the team’s tracks, but even these proved unreliable,
as gusts of wind quickly erased them. Linder’s anxiety mounted as
the light from his headlamp failed to penetrate the whiteout and the
footprints before him grew indistinct. Then a wave of dread hit him
when he realized that he had not looked behind him for nearly a
quarter of an hour. He stopped and turned around. There was no sign
of the Gallo or his dog. He was alone.

Linder waited quietly
for a minute, then two, listening for any signs that others were
nearby. Moments later, panic set in. How had he allowed himself to
get lost so quickly? Why hadn’t the guards forced him to keep up?
And why was it so difficult to think of what to do next? The lethargy
that weighed down his limbs and the absence of any adrenalin-fueled
rush of panic offered a clue. He had reached his physical limit. His
body could no longer offer his brain the support it needed to
function. If he didn’t find his way back quickly, doubtless he
would pass out and freeze before anyone could find him.

Linder looked around
him carefully to identify any familiar landmarks but, finding none,
tried again to retrace his footprints back to the Point. But the
further he went, the fainter the footprints became, until he found
himself wandering aimlessly among the trees, unable to see more than
a few feet ahead and without any sense of where he was or what
direction he should take.

At last, Linder decided
to stop and began digging a snow cave behind the overturned stump of
a fallen tree. He remembered the old adage that it’s the wind that
kills, not the cold, and burrowed deeply into the compacted snow,
more out of training and habit than any yearning to survive. As he
lay there, his mind drifted in and out consciousness, and as darkness
closed in, he sensed that he was not alone. From time to time, he
would feel something brush against his half-numbed legs, then against
his shoulders, then the back of his head. He opened his eyes and saw
moving images in the darkness that he recalled dimly having seen
before.

Then he remembered. It
had been many weeks since his last nightmare, but the worst of them
had started like this. What he saw were the spirits that had
tormented his sleep and driven him to drink. Though he had expected
to drift into a tranquil oblivion this time, the deceased targets of
his renditions and assassinations were still lying in wait for him.
And now he had no means to elude them.

A surge of dread
energized him but he found himself unable to shake himself out of the
dream. In an instant the snow and ice were gone and he was in some
dark, dank, and musty place, like a cellar or a cave but without any
perceptible walls. The nudges and shoves came more frequently now and
were more powerful. He heard muffled laughter just beyond his reach.

His dread blossomed
into terror. This was all wrong, he thought. He had quit the Agency
and had been on the verge of leaving the DSS rather than continue to
persecute the regime’s political opponents. He had offered to help
Philip Eaton and had lost everything by it. And now he was an
exhausted wretch dying alone in the Yukon. Hadn’t he suffered
enough?

He felt sharp teeth
suddenly sink into his calf and the pain was beyond anything he
thought possible. He kicked the creature with his free leg but it
clung more tightly than ever. To his surprise, it was no hairy beast
but an unclothed, greasy-skinned human being. It lunged forward and
bit a chunk out of his thigh, which gave Linder an opening to pull
the creature away and send it sprawling with a powerful blow from his
knee.

In that instant, Linder
knew that more creatures surrounded him than he could fight and, in
his pain, fear, and rage, raised his voice and called on God and
Jesus and all the saints in heaven to save him. To his surprise, the
creatures raised an earsplitting howl but approached no closer. As if
waking from one dream into another, he blinked and found himself in a
pine forest, much like the Yukon but without snow and not nearly as
cold. In the distance and across a rocky stream, he spotted a group
of people waving and calling to him. Somehow, he sensed that these
were his friends and could be trusted, but in the dim light he could
not distinguish any of their faces.

As he drew closer to
the stream, a large dog broke free from the group and bounded across
the stream, swimming through the deep water at midstream and
regaining its footing on some flat rocks. To Linder’s utter
surprise, the dog bore a strong resemblance to his boyhood dog,
Violet, a black-and-tan German Shepherd. Violet had been dead for
more than twenty years, but when this dog finally reached Linder, it
ran around him in tight circles as Violet used to do before rubbing
her head against his thigh to beg for a hug or a treat. What a
deep-chested bark Violet had, Linder thought, as he sank his hands
into the thick fur of the animal’s neck and shoulders. And this
dog’s bark seemed just as deep and heartfelt as Violet’s.

But the bark Linder
heard was not that of his boyhood pet. It was the same bark that had
reached Charlie Yost in his snow cave some thirty meters away. Yost
crawled out into the open and heard it again, a sharp, insistent
signaling bark, not the snarling bark of a wolf on the attack.

Yost probed in the
mound next to his and tugged at Will Browning’s sleeve.

“Do you hear that?”
Yost asked.

“That sounds like
Gallo’s dog,” Browning replied. “I’ll bet it’s me he’s
after. That mutt hates my guts.”

“What do you say we
go find him?” Yost proposed.

“Sure. But you go
first in case he remembers me,” Browning answered as they set off
in the direction of the barking.

Across a clearing that
on second glance turned out to be the logging road, Yost and Browning
found Gallo’s Malamute mix sniffing at Warren Linder’s head and
licking his frostbitten nose and cheeks, having tunneled into the
snow to find him. A thirty-foot leash dragged from the dog’s
harness.

“You stay here and
see if you can revive him,” Yost ordered. “I’ll go back and see
if there are others. By God, that dog had better know where he’s
going.”

“Shhh, not so loud,
Charlie,” Browning replied with a gleam in his eye. "You don’t
want to risk insulting a dog who’s that damned smart... ”

With lies, one can only move forward; there is no going back.
Russian
Proverb

LATE JANUARY, CAMP N-320, YUKON

Warren Linder opened
his eyes to find himself in a hospital bed laid with clean white
sheets and a double layer of heavy wool blankets. The room held two
dozen beds in rows facing each other across a central corridor. High
windows let in the low oblique rays of the winter sun. Linder looked
once to either side and raised himself slowly to a sitting position.

An orderly, who was
stripping a bed across the hall, noticed Linder looking at him.

“Might as well get on
your feet now,” the man suggested without stopping his work
remaking the bed. “The toilet is down the hall on the right. You’re
rated as able-bodied so you’re going to have to take care of
yourself around here. Don’t expect anybody to hold your hand.”

The orderly, a compact
man with pug nose and a Boston accent, approached the foot of
Linder’s bed and took up the clipboard hanging there, which Linder
assumed contained his medical charts.

“You have three days
until discharge,” he said, reading from the clipboard. “Enjoy it
while it lasts.”

“Thanks, got it,”
Linder replied before swinging his legs over the side of the bed,
sliding carefully onto the floor and plodding off down the hall in
his aching bare feet.

Once the lavatory door
closed behind him, Linder stepped up to a sink and viewed himself in
the mirror. He barely recognized the image as his own. The scraggly
beard, matted hair streaked with gray, the sallow cheeks and
forehead, the white patches of frostbitten skin at the tip of his
nose and chin, the dark bags under his eyes, all made him look at
least a decade older than his thirty-eight years. On impulse, he
stripped out of the threadbare cotton pajamas and examined his torso
in the mirror. The physical decline distressed him: the once-rippling
muscles now shrunken to stringy bundles of sinew under translucent
skin, the livid scars from recent logging injuries, the hunched
posture brought about by chronic pain in his lower back and hips.