Exile Hunter (35 page)

Linder kept a poker
face.

“You know, Linder,
around here, being pegged as an escapist has a way of shortening a
man’s life.”

“What people think
doesn’t matter if you succeed,” Linder answered.

“That’s what every
damned fool thinks who tries to escape,” Yost scoffed. “The
trouble is, they all fail.”

“It seems that most
everybody here thinks escape is impossible,” Linder countered. “And
yet they never stop talking about it. Listen, Charlie, I was a Party
member and now I’m a traitor. I’m under a life sentence. The DSS
will never let me out of here alive. The only option left is to
change my fate.”

“And you expect me to
look the other way? What do you think will happen to the rest of us
if you break out?”

“Then why not come
along?” Linder proposed.

“Because even knowing
that you plan to escape makes me a dead man if they catch you. It’s
all or nothing, Linder, and I’m not ready to bet the farm on a weak
horse.”

“Then why not just
forget we ever had this conversation? I won’t tell anyone about it
and, if I’m caught, you can count on my not telling the security
screws. But if I make it all the way to the final countdown, how
about if I save a place for you? If I fail, you have nothing to lose,
but if things look good, you have an option to come along at the last
minute. Hell, I don’t even ask that you agree; just give me back
the saw and let me walk.”

“And if I decide not
to go along, you’d really trust me not to rat on you?” Yost asked
with narrowed eyes.

“If you haven’t
ratted by the time I’m ready to move out, yeah, I’ll take that
chance,” Linder answered without hesitation.

Yost’s pale blue eyes
fixed Linder with a penetrating gaze.

“Okay, here’s what
I’ll do,” he said. “I won’t turn you in. But I won’t lift a
finger to help you, either, and don’t ever count on me looking the
other way if you screw up again. If you get caught attempting to
escape, I’ll deny I knew anything. But if and when you’re ready
to make your break, save a place for me. Who knows, circumstances may
change….”

Without waiting for a
response, Yost handed Linder the saw. Then he turned on his heel and
went back the same way he had come.

Linder felt his heart
race and his breathing become rapid and shallow while sweat moistened
his brow despite the biting wind. For a moment, he felt too weak at
the knees to continue up the hill to the tool shed. But a few minutes
later he returned to his work team with a smile on his face and a
spare saw in his gloved hand.

He took Burt aside at
the first opportunity to tell him about the conversation with Yost.

“Incredible,” Burt
replied, looking pale but unruffled on hearing the news. “What
could be the odds of that broken saw being Yost’s and of you
running into him like that? It can’t be a coincidence.”

“So you think Yost
already knew we had the saw?” Linder asked in disbelief.

“No, he couldn’t
have,” Burt replied, looking away as if deep in thought. “That’s
the point. Nobody could have seen me find it or hide it. No, what I
mean is that what just happened between you and Yost must have
happened for a reason.”

“Okay,” Linder
answered. “So what’s the reason? And where do we go from here?”

“It means the clock
is ticking on our plans. Now that Yost knows what we’re up to,
there’s no turning back.”

* * *

Over the next two
weeks, Linder and Burt redoubled their efforts to acquire and hide
the tools, food and spare clothing they would need for the escape. In
addition to the purloined hand saw, they laid their hands on a
kitchen knife, a length of rope, a partial spool of utility cord, a
hot water bottle, a butane cigarette lighter, a small metal cooking
pot, spare forks and spoons, a torn section of tarpaulin, and the
liquid-filled compass that the old native, Scotty, had given Linder
at the infirmary. For food, they laid aside a modest supply of dried
bread crusts, wild nuts and dried berries, foil-wrapped meal bars
acquired by bartering medicinal herbs and potions, and a kilo of
stolen oatmeal. Not much, but enough for a start, and already more
than they could easily conceal.

Since Burt had been a
gardener and amateur naturalist before his arrest, he sought out
like-minded prisoners who had learned how to forage for edible plants
containing essential nutrients not available in the official camp
diet. He also learned to create herbal infusions with healing
properties. Though such foraging was difficult and time-consuming,
those who practiced it claimed that the wild foods and medicinal
herbs gave them a vital edge on survival.

Burt was accordingly
delighted when Scotty, the old Kaska native, was transferred to the
timber-felling unit. Though Scotty refused to comment on the reason
for the transfer, word soon arrived through the grapevine that he had
lost his coveted slot at the sawmill for having led prisoners of
native extraction in a work stoppage over an alleged affront to
native customs.

Some saw the
reassignment as tantamount to a death sentence for the old man. But
far from posing a hardship to Scotty, work in the forest seemed to
agree with him. He clambered up and down hills all day long with the
agility of a man half his age and handled a crosscut or an axe as
well as any veteran lumberjack. Instead of placing his work team at a
disadvantage in meeting its weekly quota, Scotty helped them to
exceed it by enough to earn the team extra food rations.

Within days of his
arrival, Scotty began giving Burt and others a special tutorial in
trapping wild game for food and fur and in brewing an evil-tasting
pine bark extract to strengthen the heart and blood vessels. He even
showed team members how to trade pelts with locally hired guards for
vodka to be used in making energizing infusions from the woody roots
of Devil’s Club and other members of the ginseng family.

One evening after
dinner outside Linder’s hut, Burt urged Linder to include Scotty in
their escape plans. While the Kaska tribesman would be valuable for
land navigation, unlocking the hidden resources of forest and tundra,
and perhaps in enlisting aid from native tribes encountered en route,
Linder was concerned that a man of Scotty’s age might delay the
team’s movement.

“Look,” Linder
argued, “we only have room for one more man, and I’d rather pick
someone younger, someone with plenty of energy who we can count on to
take the point when we break new trail in rugged terrain or slog
through heavy snow. The rest of us aren’t exactly spring chickens,
you know.”

“Don’t let Scotty’s
weather beaten face fool you,” Burt answered. “Believe it or not,
he’s the same age as Browning. And if it’s stamina you’re
looking for, he’s a regular Sherpa. The way I see it, the real risk
is in not taking him. Now that I know what to look for, I’ve been
picking up hints that Scotty may have escape plans of his own this
winter. And if he were to make his move before we did, we’d be back
at square one.”

By now, Linder and Burt
knew that a fraternity of escapists existed in every camp and that
these men possessed an uncanny ability to detect talk of escape. Such
talk tended to ignite paranoia in every would-be escapist for fear
that a rival might flee first and spoil his plans. In fact, any
breakout attempt, successful or not, inevitably triggered a security
crackdown that could last weeks or months before new lapses in
official vigilance cropped up.

But before Linder could
speak up about Scotty, a blank expression suddenly came over Burt’s
face. In the next moment, Scotty appeared as if out of thin air from
behind Linder to stand beside Burt.

“If I want go away, I
can go any time,” he told the pair in a soft voice. “I stay
because other Kaska men who cannot leave need help from me. But
spirit guides want me now for other work far from here. They say you
also chosen for work outside but you need help from Scotty. Because
you good man, I help you. I come with you on long walk far from
here.”

Linder turned to Burt,
his eyes wide with surprise, before addressing Scotty.

“If it were anyone
but you, the answer would be no,” he told the native. “But tell
me one thing. Do you honestly believe that we can make it out of here
alive?”

“Escape not easy. But
if you try, no man catch you. This I see for sure.”

“Okay, you’re in,”
Linder declared with a twisted smile. “Burt will be your contact,
since you two already forage together. Welcome to the team.”

* * *

With advice from
Scotty, Burt devised a more detailed escape plan, while Linder and
Browning focused their efforts on gathering supplies. Together, they
decided to carry out their plan as soon as the next major snowstorm
hit. With spring still months away, vigilance among the guards would
be low while the snow was deep, for snow made any movement slow and
easy to track. So their plan required that they slip away at the
start of the storm and let the snow cover their tracks. They would
then need to make rapid progress before the weather cleared and stay
burrowed underneath the snow until it was safe to reemerge.
Improvised snowshoes would be essential. And to throw off their
pursuers, they would set off in a direction other than toward Alaska,
civilization, and the sea, where the authorities would expect them to
go.

Once they were on the
move again, they would travel primarily during the extended dusk and
dawn and by moonlight whenever they could. The primary risk of
detection would come from trackers and from aerial surveillance. If
detected by a tracker or his dog, they would have to outdistance him
or face disaster, for killing the dog would do little good unless
they also killed the tracker. And none of the four was willing to
take another man’s life to save his own. On that they agreed.

As for aerial
surveillance, there would be little or no risk of satellite coverage,
because most of America’s civilian and military reconnaissance
satellites had been knocked out by solar flares during the Events or
destroyed by the Chinese when U.S. forces joined the Russians in the
ill-starred Manchurian War. Based on information gleaned during their
days in government, Linder and Burt were confident that the country’s
remaining surveillance satellites would not be made available to the
Corrective Labor Administration for prisoner tracking and recapture.

That left the threat
from drones. Even during the height of the Manchurian War, old-timers
at Camp N-320 recalled that the CLA deployed a small fleet of
unmanned aircraft in Alaska for surveillance and interdiction of
escaped prisoners. Fortunately, however, recent news from a
clandestine short-wave radio in camp had reported increased Chinese
naval and air patrol activity all across the Bering Strait and
coastal Alaska. A few nights earlier, a Chinese reconnaissance
aircraft had reportedly been shot down over Sitka, putting the region
on heightened alert. If the reports were true, any available
government drones set aside for tracking escaped prisoners from
inland camps would likely be redeployed to the coast.

Every day, Scotty
consulted the skies for signs of an approaching storm while Burt
consulted a homemade barometer he had constructed from a water glass
and an inverted plastic bottle. At last, both men’s indicators
agreed that a massive storm was on its way. Burt passed the
information to Linder, who conferred with Browning. The four agreed
to move their supplies into position the next morning for an escape
from the logging site later in the day.

Now that the time for
action had come, Linder ran through his tasks for the next day and
suddenly remembered his promise to Yost. While he had offered Yost
the opportunity to join the escape, he and Burt had agreed not to
mention the offer to Browning or Scotty until the last possible
moment. In that way, Yost would not know about Browning and Scotty’s
planned participation in the escape and they would not know of his.

But now, Linder and
Burt faced a dilemma. To renew the offer to Yost would put Browning
and Scotty at added risk. At the same time, Yost’s cooperation
could greatly improve the team’s chance of success. While Linder
felt an obligation to keep his word to Yost, he could not do it in a
way that violated his trust with the other team members.

Only a half hour
remained before curfew. If he was going to approach Yost before they
left for work the next morning, now was the time. Linder slipped to
the floor from his bunk, put on his boots and hat, and headed for the
door.

“Where are you
going?” Burt asked as Linder passed his bunk.

“To see a man about a
dog,” Linder replied casually. But before Linder could pass, Burt
reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

“What dog?” Burt
hissed.

“The big one we
promised to take for a walk,” Linder answered, leaning over Burt’s
bunk and speaking softly so as not to be overheard.

“Can’t he hold it
till morning?” Burt replied with an anxious look.

“I’ve got a feeling
about this,” Linder asserted. “If there’s an issue, I’d
rather know now.”

“Okay, it’s your
call,” Browning said as Linder rose to leave.

Linder walked directly
from the hut to the latrines but returned by way of Yost’s hut. As
Yost often received visitors from men on his team, none of the other
residents appeared to pay much attention to Linder as he made his way
to Yost’s bunk, located in a corner of the hut. As this particular
hut was reserved for supervisors, foremen and trusties, the bunks
were spread out for added privacy and most were separated from one
another by makeshift partitions consisting of army blankets hung from
the tops of the triple-decker bunks. Linder found Yost darning a worn
sock and stood over him until he drew the foreman’s attention.