The Alberta Connection (27 page)

Ryce looked across the stream to the road and
then slowly stepped into the frigid water. The stream was only
about a foot deep where it crossed the damaged culvert, but it was
more than fifty feet wide and cold.

Ryce was waiting at the pick-up point when
the Suburban arrived. Phil announced he was still six minutes out,
which gave Ryce plenty of time to retrieve Jimmy. Ryce pulled open
the driver’s door and asked Tanya to hop in the back. He looked
back across the stream. There were no openings that would allow him
to turn the Suburban around. He drove the Suburban a few meters in
the direction of the lake, slammed the gearshift into reverse, and
punched the gas pedal. As he was splashing across the stream, Ryce
hoped his modifications to the exhaust system would prevent
drowning the engine.

While Ted, Hank, Craig, and Barry loaded
Jimmy into the vehicle, Ryce looked back across the stream. He had
managed to keep the Suburban out of the deep water on the upstream
side of the crossing. Moreover, he had negotiated the gap between
the explosive woodshed and the cabin. He was still in one
piece.

The cargo door on the Suburban slammed shut,
and Ryce heard a voice. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

He slammed the gear lever into drive and
punched the gas once more. The overpowered Suburban began to
fishtail in the meadow grass.

Ryce got the vehicle under control long
enough to stop, point to the jump packs, and shout, “We need those
packs.”

Ramona and Tanya tumbled out, attempted to
grab two packs at a time, and decided to make two trips.

As they drove past the cabin, Ramona was
heard to mumble, “I don’t remember them being that heavy.”

Ryce and Phil arrived at the pick-up area at
the same time. Jimmy was placed in the helicopter, Phil gave a
thumbs up, and they were gone.

Ryce looked over at Tanya. “What happened to
your escorts?”

Ramona laughed. “They discovered where you
told us to park has gotta be a ten for fishing. When you got on the
radio, they said a Suburban does not need four drivers, and they
would have a few more minutes to eliminate the fish population.
They also mentioned the camp needed a clean-up.”

Ryce looked over at Ted, Hank, Craig, and
Barry. “Merge Jimmy’s pack into ours and then give Tanya any of his
personal items.”

Halfway through the merging process, the
cabin began to erupt. Ryce was surprised it was not a large
explosion. It looked like several small charges, strategically
placed, had gone off in a pre-assigned sequence. Had the cabin
occupants actually kept the destruction of the forest to a minimum?
It appeared they had, except for the new, six-foot wide ditch
leading from the former cabin to the former generator room.

When they finished merging the packs, Barry
handed Jimmy’s pack to Tanya, and then Ryce kissed her.

“We need to catch up with O2. As soon as I
put on a new pair of socks and boots.”

Ramona laughed. She knew about hiking in wet
boots and socks. She had seen some pictures of O2 with a pair of
boots tied to his pack, next to socks hung on parachute cord. He
told her he always had one pair of boots and socks getting dry.
Ramona smiled as she watched Ryce tie his boots to his pack and
fashion a clothesline for his socks.

Tanya and Ramona returned to the Suburban,
and drove back to where they had been camping.

Ryce heard his radio buzz.

“This is O2. How’s Jimmy?”

Ryce pressed the send button. “He’s going to
lose both legs at the knees, but the medics say Barry and Hank did
a good job of getting tourniquets on his legs before he lost too
much blood. We will be leaving the cabin, or what is left of it, in
five. It just exploded and didn’t burn much. If the laptop group
heard the explosion, they will know someone is on to them. Watch
yourself.”

Ryce got the usual double click in reply,
swung his pack onto his back, and turned toward the lake.

Chapter 33

As he hiked past
the lake, Ryce remembered O2 was carrying a GPS tracker monitored
by the thermal satellite. The tracker emitted an ID code displayed
on the thermal image. Ryce radioed John with the code and asked him
to keep an eye on all three groups. Within a few minutes, O2 was
heard on the radio.

“Thank you for reminding me about the
tracker. I just activated it.”

Ryce heard John’s voice on the radio. “The
tracker just showed up on the satellite image. I have three groups
on the display.”

Ryce keyed his radio. “John, can you get an
idea of how close O2 is to Dianne? I would like them about three
miles apart.”

After a few moments, John keyed his radio.
“It looks like O2 is less than three miles from Dianne. She isn’t
moving fast at all.”

Ryce heard O2 chuckle. “I will slow it down a
little, but if I slow it down too much, some of my team will fall
asleep on the trail.”

Ryce heard a new voice over his radio.

“Good morning, Director Dalton. This is
Dexter Reynolds again. It is nice talking to you once more.
Congratulations on your new position. I am really sorry to hear one
of your men was injured.

“JBTF-Canada has access to your thermal
satellites and is monitoring your progress. If you need anything,
just let me know. Reynolds out.”

The plan was to allow the laptops to cross
the border, and then have JBTF-Canada follow the laptops to the
hand-off point. O2 and Ryce were primarily involved as a backstop
to keep the group from returning unnoticed to the US. The theory
was simple. Let the laptops cross the border, let them get picked
up by the next level in the food chain, and then follow that level
as far as possible. The border crossing was extremely remote, but
easy. How hard is it to step over a sagging three-strand barbed
wire fence?

If the reports John had gotten from the FBI
were accurate, the data on the laptops were sensitive, but outdated
and unreliable. And, extremely secure. The laptops without the
LoJack software contained a program which performed a secure erase
on the hard drives if the unlock code was not entered within a
preset time. Eventually, someone up the ladder would boot up the
laptops to see what they had gotten. They would have nothing. If
they were in possession of the laptop with the LoJack program, they
would boot up the laptop, and it would report its position.

Although he was perhaps less than two miles
behind O2, Ryce set a moderately fast pace. Dianne was traveling
with three killers. Ryce was more than confident O2’s team could
handle anything Dianne or her companions could throw at them. Deep
down, however, Ryce wanted a piece of the action, if there was any
action. Even if Dianne could average 2 mph and hike for six hours a
day, the laptops would be on American soil for two more days. Ryce
smiled. There was plenty of time for Dianne and her friends to make
a mistake. Especially her three killer friends.

John’s group provided constant updates of the
distance between Ryce and O2, and between O2 and Dianne. A little
after 2:00 PM, Ryce heard Tanya’s voice.

“O2, shut it down. The laptops are not
moving.”

Ryce smiled. Tanya had a nice radio
voice.

At 5:00 PM, Ryce heard Ramona’s voice. “Ryce,
you might consider slowing down. O2 is close enough to throw a rock
at you.”

When Ryce reached for his sidearm, he heard
O2 chuckle. “You’ll never get to it in time.”

Ryce looked up and laughed. O2 had grown into
a large bush.

O2 led Ryce’s team toward a moderately
concealed campsite. When they were twenty feet from the campsite,
O2 looked over at Ryce.

“How’s your arm?”

Ryce frowned. “It’s still attached, but the
pack is killing it. It hurts all the time. I took some
over-the-counter medication. Anything stronger is going to affect
my judgment.”

As he scanned the area, Ryce wondered what he
had gotten himself into. Eleven armed men in camo sitting around a
fire was an obvious indication something was not right. Ryce pulled
out his cell phone and began taking pictures. Three of O2’s men
were standing along the stream. Only one of them held up a stringer
of three fish for Ryce to photograph. O2 said the rest were going
to starve to death.

The stream that paralleled the trail ran
straight north. Ryce had studied all of the Internet map programs
he could find but this stream was not listed on any of them. And,
he had decided not to purchase a paper map; it would take up too
much of his limited pack space. Where he was standing, the stream
was ten feet wide and perhaps two feet deep. The streambed was
filled with medium-sized rocks, a perfect cover for trout.

Ryce looked around the campsite. A very small
fire was burning in a very small pit surrounded by very large river
rock. The fire was directly under a tree that would dissipate the
smoke. Ryce could see someone had collected a small pile of dry
wood. The six sleeping bags for O2’s team had been unrolled and
covered with camo netting. From about fifty feet, the camp was
probably going to be unseen.

Ryce positioned his sleeping bag, rolled it
out, set the night watch schedule, and then pulled an MRE out of
his pack. C-Rats were OK for the observation post at the cabin
where smells were not allowed. For a test one evening, Tanya had
used only the ingredients in MREs for their dinner. It had actually
turned out very tasty. Ryce chuckled. It would be nice to have
Tanya with him now, but perhaps not for fixing dinner.

Ryce and O2 had rank, so Ryce took the first
evening watch and gave O2 the last watch. They would not get their
night broken up by standing a watch.

O2 was about half way through his hour when
Ryce got up and began stringing his pole. He placed his radio
earphone in his ear and asked for a morning report. According to
the operator watching the thermal satellite, there were four blobs
approximately two miles from Ryce’s position. A fifth blob had
separated from the group and was located almost a mile closer to
the Canadian border. Ryce wondered who it was and why they had
broken off contact with the main body of Dianne’s group.

As the sun came up, Ryce set up the solar
panels to recharge the batteries for the communication devices. He
had learned the hard way that recharging with the solar panels was
slow. He had five panels, with one panel modified to clip onto a
backpack. The clip-on panel was given to the one with the almost
dead battery.

Ryce found the block of salt pork he always
carried, sliced off a sliver, and threaded it onto his hook. Within
minutes, he had three very nice trout on his tree branch stringer
and six people watching him.

He pulled the salt pork out of his pocket.
“You cut a piece of salt pork that sort of looks like a worm. Be
sure to hang it at least an inch off the bottom of the hook.”

Ryce tossed the block across the stream to
the closest person and then scrambled to bring in the trout now
tugging on his line. He cleaned his fish, pulled out his frying
pan, and began cooking the fish. Within minutes, he had several of
the team in line to use the frying pan for their fish. Somehow, no
one besides Ryce had remembered that a frying pan, butter, and
lemon juice are necessities on a fishing trip.

Everything was packed up when John announced
Dianne and her four blobs were moving. The river rocks were
returned to the river from the fire pit, and the grass was
replaced.

O2 looked over at Ryce. “This is your dance,
but I suggest we send out two points and split the trail.”

Ryce smiled. In the Rangers, they called it
the “Rattle Snake,” also known as the “Forked Tongue.” Ryce picked
one of his team and one of O2’s. They climbed into their packs and
started up the trail.

Ryce jumped through some mental hoops and
concluded they were about a third of the way to the border. He
keyed his radio.

“Dexter, you might have a better idea of
distances around here than we do. How far are we from the
border?”

There was a short pause and then Dexter’s
voice on the radio.

“The front-running group is about fifteen
miles from the border, and I have a GPS tracker showing up about
two miles behind the first group.”

The day progressed without incident. In
addition to John’s group at the campground, the Canadian branch of
the JBTF had an agent who was constantly watching the satellite
display. Ryce would not be surprised by anything. When Dianne and
her group stopped for lunch, Ryce’s group stopped for MREs.

Ryce was notified at 3:00 PM Dianne had
stopped. Had she stopped for the night? He took a chance she had,
and pulled his point men back.

When Dianne had not moved by 5:00 PM, Ryce
rolled out his sleeping bag, assembled his fishing pole and
attacked the stream. Within a few minutes, he had hooked three very
nice trout. He did not plan to starve to death on this campout.

At 6:00 PM, John notified Ryce there were two
hot spots approaching Dianne’s position from the north. Ryce picked
two of his group and sent them up the trail for early warning. He
didn‘t want to be surprised if the two hot spots did not stop at
Dianne’s location.

Ryce was informed at 7:00 PM the two hot
spots had stopped moving very close to Dianne’s position. Both John
and Dexter were having trouble keeping the spots separated Ryce
called back his two point men, set the watch schedule and then
snuggled into his sleeping bag.

Ryce was awakened by buzzing in his earphone.
He checked the time. It was 12:15 AM. He pressed the send
button.

“This is Ryce.”

“Ryce, this is Dexter. The two hot spots that
temporarily merged with Dianne are moving south once more.
According to what we can guesstimate, they are now a quarter of a
mile away from her position.”

Ryce thanked him and found O2. “The two hot
spots near Dianne are moving south again. We need a point.”