Westfarrow Island

by Paul A. Barra

  Rumors drifted around about a mysterious figure glimpsed occasionally by someone fishing or hunting in the woods. The figure always disappeared before he or she could be identified. He became known as the Adirondack Bushman, but no damage or violence was ever reported. The Bushman became a rural legend no one worried about, and that added a touch of spice to north woods living.

  Ballard may have been antisocial and irresponsible in his choice of lifestyle, but he was not stupid. He realized that residents of the sparsely populated woods surrounding Saratoga Springs would never summon the animosity to launch a campaign against his presence if he did no harm to them or to their property. At night he raided their garbage cans when they were visiting their summer homes, but always put the tops back on to keep the raccoons out. If he used a hidden key to enter a house when no one was home, he cleaned up after himself and stole only what he assumed the owners would not miss. Venison, for instance. Local friends often gave owners of summer homes gifts of processed and frozen deer, but they found that tastes, evolved in the cafés and bistros of downstate cities, did not easily tolerate the gamey, fatless flesh of wild animals, so Ballard dug out ice-rimed chunks from the bottom of box freezers and lived through the winters. He provoked no confrontations with dogs and picked only a few apples from each tree when they ripened.

  Most homeowners in Saratoga knew of the Adirondack Bushman only from tales and rumors. But Anthony Tagliabue would have reason to recognize his survival techniques. Tagliabue discovered his signs because he was looking. He needed to know who was in the vicinity of Jack Brunson’s cabin. Some people could be in the forests to do him harm.

  First, Tagliabue noticed signs of someone moving through the area. Large animals would never scar the forest floor as a man would because their feet were soft and unshod. Ballard didn’t much care if anyone saw his markings as he walked. No one was looking for him and not many people were in the woods, and those who did walk the woods would assume the prints were made by another hunter. The trail of prints left by Ballard to and from the Brunson cabin appeared to be weeks old. Tagliabue noted them and then pushed them to the back of his mind as he worked his way to the back of the cabin. Daylight was failing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Yellow light issued from the windows of the cabin. Tagliabue could smell smoke and saw it being pushed around by the evening breeze as it floated out of the chimney. Wishing he’d worn a warmer coat, he willed his body to ignore the dropping temperature as he lay in the deep shadow of an old pine and watched. He saw one man walk past the kitchen window. It was Brunson’s bodyguard, the one whose nose he had broken in the Pelham Island. He was a man, Tagliabue assumed would be driven by thoughts of vengeance and used to violence, a man he would have to pay special attention to when he breached the perimeter of the house.

  The bodyguard had not been on the Hatteras. Tagliabue figured that he had been sent to the cabin to assure the area was safe enough to hide the defector if Cuthbert and Brunson were able to capture him. Maybe he even drove them to the cabin when they abandoned the boat.

  The rest of the windows of the cabin were covered in curtains but when he circled the house he could see silhouettes he recognized as Jack and the older man, Cuthbert. He saw no one who could be the Russian. It was important to know where he was—if he was even in the cabin—and if he was alive. After reconnoitering slowly and quietly for another fifteen minutes, he came to realize that the defector was probably in the one room in total darkness. A bedroom, he figured.

  At about nine thirty, when the sun was fully gone from the sky, the kitchen door opened and the bodyguard came out to the small back deck for a smoke. Through the opened doorway before the back door swung closed, Tagliabue could see Brunson and Cuthbert sitting in the living room, one room back from the kitchen. Broken Nose looked around as he smoked, a rifle hanging from his left shoulder. When he ground out the butt on the sole of his hiking boot and started back in, Tagliabue came up fast behind him. The man turned, reaching for the Ruger tactical rifle already slipping toward his hand. Tagliabue shot him in the face with Giselle’s Walther from two feet away. Blood and bone and brain tissue were still spraying from the back of the bodyguard’s head as Tagliabue lunged past him in a crouch. Cuthbert had leaped to his feet when Tagliabue’s first shot sounded. He moved with remarkable agility, but the attack was almost instantaneous and he had no chance to defend himself. Cuthbert was drawing a gun from a shoulder holster when Tagliabue fired at him. The first round missed but made the older man flinch, ruining the smoothness of his draw. The second caught him in the chest and the third tore open his neck. Thrashing, he crashed into a flat-screen television set and went with it to the floor, his Glock flying from his hand, the TV still blaring a ball game.

  Tagliabue’s momentum carried him fully into the living room; by then, Jack Brunson was kneeling on the carpeted floor behind the recliner he had been sitting in, with a big pistol out. Tagliabue had a quick thought of talking to him, but it was too late. The .357 Magnum in Brunson’s hand boomed. Tagliabue felt the impact turn him and twist him off his feet. He landed on his right side. The front door slammed open seconds later. He could feel the cool night air drifting through the cabin as he lay on the floor in a sudden silence, trying to assess his situation.

  Brunson’s bullet had caught him just below and to the left of his diaphragm. His belly hurt and it took him a minute to get his breath back. His Kevlar vest had prevented any mortal damage but he was bruised by the powerful bullet. The bodyguard was dead and Cuthbert was sprawled on the TV, eyes wide, hands empty. As Tagliabue’s ears recovered from the noise of guns firing, he could hear the sounds of the late-season Yankee game and a wet, gurgling noise coming from the turned agent. He could not hear Brunson.

  Getting to his feet slowly, tracking with his gun, he toed Cuthbert’s handgun out of the dying man’s reach and stuck it in his waistband. Bent over like a man with stomach cramps, he moved through the small house until he found someone tied by the wrists to a bed in the second bedroom. He whispered to him.

  “You hurt?”

  The man shook his head. Tagliabue slipped a knife from his belt scabbard and sliced the plastic ties.

  “Get ready to move fast.”

  “Da.”

  “I’m going to check out the rest of the cabin. I’ll be back for you in a minute.”

  “Da.”

  He found no one else. Cuthbert had become silent. Aaron Judge was facing a 2-2 count in the fifth. Tagliabue searched the corpse quickly, the Walther never leaving his hand. He found keys on a Land Rover fob and a wallet. Leaving the car key, he stuffed the wallet into a big leg pocket of his cargo pants. He took a wallet and the tactical rifle from the stiffening bodyguard and turned out the lights. Standing in a corner, upright by now in the dark, Tagliabue could hear nothing. Jack Brunson must have left the cabin. Was he waiting outside?

  Leaving the remains of the two dead men for the cleanup crew, he shuffled along a wall to the captive’s room. He led the Russian to the back door. The man would not look at the bodyguard and his ruined skull. Tagliabue spoke in a whisper.

  “I’m going out now. You wait for me to whistle, then come out fast and go behind the first big tree. You understand?”

  “Da.”

  “Repeat the instructions to me, please.”

  Panting hard, the man said, “Go out fast. Go behind big tree.”

  Tagliabue nodded and patted the man’s back. Then he shot out the door, leaped off the deck, and ran into the woods. No gunfire. He waited. The woods were silent. He waited some more, listening hard for any movement. When he whistled once, short and sharp, the Russian came out of the house at a run. He crashed into the woods and fetched up behind a tree near Tagliabue. The two of them waited in the dark forest.

  Tagliabue had thought of taking the Land Rover parked in front of the cabin, but worried about Brunson lying in ambush. With a road and parking area in front, there were a lot of shooting lanes. Jack Brunson was a
lawyer, not a soldier, and he was probably halfway to Saratoga Springs in his own car by now, but Tagliabue could not take that chance with the radioman from the Leonov. There could be other associates of Cuthbert and Brunson in the area. Brunson could have called for help. Deciding it was safer for him and the defector to make their way back through the forest to his government Ford, he punched Giselle’s number on the cell she’d given him.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m out of the cabin with our man. Cuthbert and one other inoperable inside. Brunson on the loose, armed and uninjured.”

  “We’ll remove the debris and clean the cabin. Get back to base with your friend.”

  She clicked off. Tagliabue took the phone apart and slipped the card into his pocket. He smashed the phone underfoot and put the pieces in another cargo pocket.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Alexis.”

  “Okay, Alex. Here’s the deal: I work for the US government. We have to get to a hotel in Albany. I have a car but we have to go through the woods to get to it. That means we have to wait until it gets light out so we can find our way through the woods. And there’s one bad guy left and he could be hiding in the dark. Understand?”

  “Da. We should go away from house.”

  The Russian’s voice was pitched a little higher than Tagliabue expected, but was steady. He was young, despite his gray hair, and slender, needing a shave. Life under Putin might be making Alexis show the aging effects of stress, but his mind still worked. Putting some distance between them and the house, where Brunson could still be lurking, was Tagliabue’s idea as well.

  “Good idea. Let’s move.”

  They worked their way through the woods for ten minutes, pausing often to listen for pursuit. Tagliabue hoped they were heading in the direction of his government Ford but the main goal was to put distance between themselves and any possible danger. He tried to keep the lake to their left but it was difficult to see anything clearly much of the time. When they stopped for the night, both men took cover at the base of trees. Tagliabue thought of giving Cuthbert’s automatic to Alexis but decided against it. God only knew what the defector’s mind had cobbled together so far, after being kidnapped from the small boat Carlos had used to pick him up. As a radio operator, the young man could not be familiar with the level of violence he had experienced in the last twenty-four hours. Did he have any reason to think Tagliabue represented any safer an escort than the three who had him imprisoned in Brunson’s cabin?

  He settled into the pine needles and listened for movement as he kept an eye on Alexis, who sat with his back to a tree, his chin on his chest.

  First light was just beginning to color the waters of Lough-berry Lake when the Russian suddenly lunged toward him. At almost the same instant, bark blew off the tree above where Alexis had been sleeping and the crack of a long rifle echoed in the woods. Tagliabue scooted around his tree, pulling Alexis in close.

  “You see him?”

  Alexis pointed into the woods in front of them after touching his ear. The Russian must have heard something but it was deadly quiet now. Tagliabue had the bodyguard’s rifle in his hands as he scanned the area ahead of them. The gun was a Mini-14, the new 5847 that fired standard NATO-caliber bullets. It felt like a plastic carbine to Tagliabue, but he knew the magazine held twenty rounds and was full. He had checked it automatically when he snatched the gun from Broken Nose and was glad to have that many shots available now, in the middle of a sniper attack. The rifle was light and short and quiet, probably the perfect gun for hunting a man in the deep woods.

  The man who shot at Alexis was a pro, no doubt about that and little doubt that he had at least one partner to spot for him. Now that his prey was alerted, the assassin was satisfied to sit still and let his target move first. To the assassin’s disadvantage was the daylight creeping in among the pines and up the side of the rocky hill behind his two targets. Alexis lay next to Tagliabue like a dead man, his jacket covering his head.

  Five minutes passed in silence. Tagliabue could feel sweat forming at the small of his back, despite the coolness of the mountain air. Something moved in a tiny glade some two hundred yards to his left. His sight was obstructed in that direction so he listened carefully. More cautious movement, faint rustling in the undergrowth. Tagliabue trained his rifle in the direction of the clearing. He took in a breath and held it. Something brown ambled into his line of sight.

  “Don’t shoot the deer. He’s my friend.”

  The voice behind him startled Tagliabue. He spun around, the Walther in his hand, a round up the chute. A man squatted in a patch of sunlight on the side of the hill facing Tagliabue and Alexis, ten yards from them and maybe ten feet above them. His arms rested on his thighs and his hands hung loosely over his knees. Eyes and mouth both popped open when he saw the handgun but he didn’t move. Tagliabue couldn’t shoot an unarmed man who was no apparent threat to him or Alexis. This one with a lopsided face and scraggly white beard looked . . . incompetent somehow. Tagliabue couldn’t be specific about his reasoning at that tense moment, but he didn’t sense danger from him. Maybe it was the blank look on his face. He barked a harsh whisper at him.

  “Get out of the sun, man. There’s someone shooting at us.”

  “Not no more.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I seen ’em both head off.”

  “Which way?”

  Hoyt Ballard pointed to his left, away from the lake. That meant, if the forest man was right, that there were two shooters for certain and they were in the process of circling around to flank him and Alexis. The Russian’s head was out from under his jacket by then; he was looking back and forth from his rescuer to this strange creature in the sun.

  “Get down anyway. They’re not leaving, just changing positions.”

  The strange man, who seemed to blend in with the foliage around him, worked his lips as he appeared to consider the advice. He said, “I’m going home.”

  With that, the Adirondack Bushman stood up and walked across a section of flat gray rock and disappeared into the side of the hill. There must be a cave in the rock there, Tagliabue surmised, a cave with a hidden entrance. He told the Russian to follow the forest man, and then he made a decision he hoped he wasn’t going to live to regret—if he lived at all. He gave Alexis the Glock he’d taken from the knotted rug in front of Cuthbert’s body.

  “It’s ready to shoot, Alex. All you have to do is point and pull the trigger.”

  The Russian nodded and took the gun. He didn’t look comfortable handling it, but he put it in his pocket.

  “Just don’t shoot me by accident. I’ll shout out when I come back.”

  The Russian nodded again and then climbed to his feet and went off the way their visitor had gone, running bent over. He too disappeared into the side of the hill. Tagliabue crept off to intercept the two gunmen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  He moved at a crouch, trying desperately to make as little noise as possible. The thick layer of pine needles helped, just as they’d helped the two assassins begin their flanking exercise, but now visibility had improved markedly. The sun slanted through the trees, glistening off the dew that glazed low grasses, throwing shadows and striking the eyes of anyone or anything facing east. The men who had fired a single shot at Alexis and who were seen leaving the area by the Adirondack Bushman were somewhere out there, cautious men who had observed the destruction their enemy could wreak.

  Tagliabue was at a disadvantage in this kind of warfare, and he knew it. He was too tall to be inconspicuous and too big to be as agile as a true jungle fighter. He had trained in special ops, so he could move quietly and quickly, and he could shoot well, but he’d done his service in the rocky wasteland that was Afghanistan and had never fought in a jungle or a forest. And he didn’t hunt for sport. Hoping that the assassins were city men, he moved forward.

  The trees became thicker and more closely spaced the farther he got from the lake. When he
determined he was far enough from the Bushman’s hideaway, the place on the rock cliff where he had disappeared and the place he called his home, Tagliabue slung the Ruger over his shoulder and climbed a fat aspen plugged deep into the rich soil. Deer had been snacking on the tree’s suckers, so there was a small clearing around the tree. He found a big limb about ten feet up and straddled it, his back to the trunk. Knowing that hunters tended not to look up as they hunted, he waited. The leaves were fat and green, some were translucent where the rising sun hit them on its passage up. Not many had fallen yet, so sight lines were few. But they also protected him from anyone wise enough to search for a deer stand on the perimeter of clearings. That was how Tagliabue spotted the first of them.

  The man was on one knee, peering through the scope on his rifle, slowly rotating the weapon through the branches of trees to the east of a clearing some hundred yards from his own perch. The man knew enough to watch for moving shadows, to pass on pines and spruces which offered no branches thick enough to bear a man’s heft. The gunman stayed in the penumbra of a thick tree, barely visible, a patch of sunlight on his shirt creating a tiny target and only the barrel of his gun protruding into the clearing. He moved it so deliberately that it looked like just another thin branch, but Tagliabue had seen its brief reflection off the low sun. Tagliabue’s line of sight was marginal, and he had to shoot through a leaf below and forward of him. He fired a single shot. The Ruger’s crack was almost lost in the open air. The target’s gun fell into the clearing and his shadow disappeared.

  The Ruger was a quiet rifle. Even so, the report startled Tagliabue and drove a thrush into the air from the aspen that hid him. He slung the rifle quickly and dropped down from the tree. It was a noisy dismount, but his cover was blown and he didn’t know if the second man had seen his muzzle flash, or the spooked bird. Crawling slowly on his belly, he moved toward the man he’d shot, hoping the second hunter would try to go to his aid. It took ten minutes to spot him. He was curled on his right side, his left arm sticking out. He was still breathing, red bubbles forming on his lips with each labored exhale. The woods were silent except when the wounded man spoke.